


Of Lunch Thieves and Fake Relationships

by PenguinofProse



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:29:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 65,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinofProse/pseuds/PenguinofProse
Summary: Clarke Griffin can barely remember a time when she did not hate Bellamy Blake. Now she has a scheme to exact her revenge but it's a risky strategy. Season-one-inspired high school/fake dating AU. Rating earned in later chapters. Posted on FFN a while ago but still getting my AO3 up-to-date!
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 165
Kudos: 337





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> So here's another fake dating high school AU, because the world always needs more of those. I think this started off as a prompt I saw on reddit, but I'm no longer entirely sure. It struck me as a perfect opportunity to channel a bit of early season one Bellarke, when Clarke is naive and not exactly well-liked by most of her peers, and Bellamy hasn't worked out who he wants to be yet. Happy reading!

Clarke Griffin could not remember a time when she did not hate Bellamy Blake.

OK. Maybe that was an exaggeration.

Clarke Griffin could _barely_ remember a time when she did not hate Bellamy Blake.

There, that was better.

The fact was, she had hated him since she was seven years old and he had stolen her lunch. It was a particularly traumatic experience, partly because it was really the first bad thing to happen in her comfortable young life, and partly because it had been a _really good_ lunch. Like, a top quality really good lunch. There had been a chicken salad sandwich _and_ a peach _and_ a chocolate cake with a little chocolate flake on the top. And she was destined never to eat any of those items, but to watch, heartbroken, as he placed them almost reverently in the bin, one piece at a time, whilst crowing at the top of his voice that she deserved this for being such a rich stuck up little _princess_.

She started crying at the chicken salad sandwich and didn't stop for about four hours. When it came to home time, she was still weeping, and her father was beyond puzzled as she stood by the school gates and managed to explain between her sobs that she intended to exact some particularly hurtful revenge on this boy. Her father, God rest his soul, was never the particularly pro-revenge type and had tried to talk her out of this plan of action, but on this rare occasion she did not heed his advice. Her mind was made up. Bellamy Blake would _suffer_. He would suffer painfully, and over a long period of time, and on a substantial scale.

One did not simply take Clarke Griffin's lunch and get away with it.

…...

By the time Clarke looked back at that fateful day almost a decade later she had to admit that, in fact, it was beginning to appear that their might be a decent chance that one _could_ simply take her lunch and get away with it. She was no closer to avenging herself for the great lunch theft of '07 than she had been ten years ago, and Bellamy Blake's all-confident smirk was adhering as firmly to his face as ever. The adhesive properties of his loyal followers, too, seemed just as strong as they had been all those years ago; the crowd had changed a little, as faces came and went, but that blatantly transparently _fake_ crowd-swaying rhetoric that he'd been demonstrating practically since he stepped out of the cradle was still alive and kicking, and thus his posse continued to grow like some kind of gross dragon gorging itself on the corpses of medieval royalty. She was quite proud of that metaphor, all things considered. It suited him, she thought, for all that it wasn't strictly relevant. It was at least a nice nod to his _infuriating_ obsession with referring to her as "Princess", as if being the daughter of a well-to-do engineer and a successful consultant surgeon in a small northern town where unemployment was rife was some kind of offence against her peers. No, _he_ was the offence against their peers. And he would suffer for it.

Unfortunately, though, she was no closer to seeing exactly _how_ he would suffer. She found herself very much in need of a plan, and expressed as much to Raven, the closest thing she had to a friend, as such, who was currently sitting next to her and creating a particularly uninspiring poster on the uses of Molybdenum.

"Will you stop going on about how much you want to screw Blake over and admit that you actually just want to screw him already?"

See above: closest thing she had to a friend.

"I do not want to screw him!" She protested automatically.

"Then there's something wrong with you. _Everyone_ wants to screw him." Her friend declared, and she briefly found herself thinking that, actually, she might have been quite interested in the idea were it not for the whole mortal enemies thing. He was, even she had to concede, annoyingly attractive. She mentally shook herself and got back to the point at hand.

"Do you actually have any solutions to anything that do not involve screwing?" She allowed her exasperation to show through in her tone. This was the resolution of a grudge which had endured for almost a _decade_ that they were discussing here, not some teenage sexual angst.

"Now you mention it..." Raven began.

"What?"

"It _is_ a pretty good solution. Start screwing him – or dating him, if you're about to get all prissy on me – and then break it off, in some dramatic and humiliating style. In front of the whole school, preferably. Or at least many _many_ people."

She considered it with more seriousness than might have been expected. On the one hand, it had the obvious downside that getting him to screw her or date her or even voluntarily be in the same room as her would be such a challenge as to render the whole scheme almost impossible. Add to that the fact that she didn't really _want_ to spend time with her arch nemesis, even if it was all in the name of exacting her long-awaited revenge.

But somehow, somewhere along the line, her mind had got stuck on an image of Bellamy Blake in the middle of a crowded dining hall with that insufferable smirk wiped clean off his face by her administration of the most thorough _dumping_ in the history of the school. She thought the dining hall would be best – lots of people, but also a nice poetic reference to the stolen lunch that had set this train of events in motion.

And anyway, really, what did she have to lose? She'd been at this for a while now with no progress at all.

It wasn't like she had a better idea.

…...

So it came to pass that she found herself at a party. She wasn't entirely clear on who was hosting the party – she and Raven had shown up with Monty and Jasper, good sorts she shared a lot of classes with, who were socially awkward enough to be on speaking terms with her but socially competent enough to score invitations to parties – but she was assured that this didn't matter. Party protocol apparently stated that knowing who was hosting was unnecessary at best. It seemed that she just needed to drink some beer out of one of these red cups and mingle a bit, exchanging brief and repetitive conversation with strangers. If she did this regularly and successfully over the coming months, the idea was that an opportunity would present itself to get with Bellamy. The plan got a little hazy after that – it wasn't clear how she was supposed to go from ending up in bed with him (easy – he was something of a player) to ending up in a medium-term dumpable relationship (difficult – he didn't really do those very often).

She couldn't help but wonder what her mother would make of all this. She'd been surprised enough to hear that Clarke had been invited to a friend's to stay over, so she was pretty sure the truth would have sent her into a dangerous state of shock. She'd probably also have provided a helpful lecture about how partying was unlikely to get her into a university medical course, and she should stick to chess as a hobby.

To be fair, she did really love chess.

Raven appeared to be more skilled at this partying lark than her, having already taken one of the red cups of beer and started a heated discussion with a sandy-haired bloke who seemed to be rather misguided in his choice of facial hair. Ah well, she shrugged mentally. There was no accounting for taste. On the other side of the room, Jasper and Monty were already dancing in a sort of chaotic fashion which seemed to involve a lot of bobbing around and didn't much resemble anything she remembered from the ballet lessons she took as a child. She supposed she ought to start by walking towards the beer. That seemed like a simple first step.

She had made it through the crowd and was in the process of snagging a cup when an incredulous voice behind her made her jolt and spill some of her drink.

"Clarke? Clarke _Griffin_?" Success: being noticed by Bellamy had been achieved.

"Hey, Bellamy." She tried for a winning smile, but the expression felt unnatural on her face.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Well, that was unflattering.

"Just enjoying the party."

"Since when do you _just enjoy a party_?"

"I just thought that it was time to change things up, have a little fun, you know?" She tried to do that thing that she'd sometimes seen girls do with their eyelashes to make them look fun and sexy and _coy_ and things, but she wasn't sure she was pulling it off. Bellamy was certainly gaping at her, but she didn't think she could be sure he was staring in a _good_ way.

"What do you know? Her highness can actually party." She didn't really have a response to that, so she stuck with smiling up at him in a way that she hoped conveyed that she was available for future intimacy with him. To her surprise, she must have been reasonably successful, because as he walked past, to grab a beer and continue on his way, he bent to whisper three little words in her ear: "I like it."

She thought that would probably be it for the evening in terms of _Operation: Lunch Revenge_ , so she decided to make the most of the opportunity to learn more about how to party successfully. It turned out it was easier than she'd feared; a couple of beers was a helpful start, and by the time she'd spent the better part of the night dancing with Jasper and Monty she had to admit she was having a pretty good time.

Perhaps she'd be spending less time playing chess in future.

She wasn't sure what she made of all the funny looks she was getting. She supposed the hostile ones were not exactly a surprise. Bellamy's crowd really didn't like her much – or at all, if she was being honest - and apart from anything else it was at least _unusual_ to see her at any kind of social event. She was caught by surprise, however, by the number of people openly checking her out in this dress Raven had talked her into wearing. She had been worried it wouldn't be suitable, having been bought by her mother for some cocktail party last year, but apparently a little black dress was appropriate for any occasion.

She left the dance floor to grab another drink, swaying her hips to the music as she went. Hip swaying seemed to be the kind of thing a young woman dancing and attempting to be a viable future hookup at a party should practise.

"Having fun yet, Princess?" Well, clearly she had not seen the last of Bellamy Blake for the evening. Why had he felt the need to check up on her? What was she supposed to say now?

"Of course. I'm very good at fun." That did not sound smooth. She needed to practise more before she next came to one of these things.

"I bet you are." What did that mean? She thought she was probably missing something, but it didn't seem to matter as he was preoccupied with raking his eyes over her body and making her feel distinctly uncomfortable.

She wasn't sure she was going to be able to go through with all this. She already felt woefully out of her depth. She'd been introduced to the basics of sexual relationships, between a one night stand with a boy who had turned out to be dating Raven, and a heady couple of weeks with a seriously hot girl from that summer camp her mother had sent her on to _make friends_ , but this whole _flirting_ thing was rather beyond her.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She hoped that sounded mysterious, and did the smiling thing again for good measure. That seemed to have worked well for her earlier. And it seemed to be working again now, because now _he_ was smiling at _her_ and she was pretty sure that had never happened before.

"Were you going to fetch another drink?" He asked. "Can I come with you to get one?" He took her elbow and guided her towards the table where the beer in the red cups was available, and she found herself feeling distinctly warm. And then he hung around for, like, another entire three minutes, doing that thing where they exchanged meaningless sentences about _fun_ that she didn't really understand, and she kept doing the smiling thing, and he kept doing a staring-at-her-boobs-thing which seemed to be new, and all in all she couldn't help but feel that this could have gone worse.

Overall, she felt, reflecting on her experience as she lay on an airbed on the floor of Raven's bedroom that night, parties might be rather good fun after all.

…...

She was surprised, at school on Monday, to find that absolutely nothing had changed in their dynamic. She was disappointed, too, but obviously only for the sake of the plan. She hadn't enjoyed having a good-looking boy spend time with her on Friday for its own sake, no, not at all. She had merely enjoyed making progress towards her goal of sweet sweet revenge for the loss of that sweet sweet chocolate cake. So it was something of a setback, now, that he had reverted to jeering at her from the other side of the Chemistry lab.

"Aww, did you get the answer wrong, Princess? Even mummy's not going to be able to get you into med school at this rate."

She had to admit, that one had a good sting to it. She wanted to get into med school, dammit, and that was quite a difficult thing to do, and she wasn't going to get very far if she kept making careless errors with her mole calculations.

"Don't rise to it." Jasper hissed in her ear. "He's just confused because you were fun on Friday."

If this hostility stemmed from confusion, by the end of the day she was convinced that he must have been _very_ confused. Before the final bell rang, she'd had a can of coke spilled down her front "by accident", found her Maths homework mysteriously missing from her locker, and been called "Princess" more times than in the entire previous week put together.

It looked like a _very_ good supply of beer and little black dresses was going to be necessary if she was going to pull this off.

…...

He didn't let up the following day, or even the following week, and she took a certain measure of satisfaction from the thought that he didn't realise he was only galvanising further her resolve to achieve thorough and complete revenge.

"What is _wrong_ with him?" She asked Raven at break the next Tuesday, while a certain dark-haired _idiot_ entertained himself and his posse by flicking pellets of paper in her general direction. "He's not normally this bad, right? I'm not imagining that?"

"What is wrong with him, my dear, is that his _arch nemesis_ or whatever the hell you two are rocked up to a party the other week looking smoking hot, and he had a fun time chatting with her, and now he's thoroughly confused."

"Jasper said that in Chemistry. Is that a thing?"

"Trust me. It's a thing."

"How do we use the thing to our advantage?"

"You show up to more parties looking smoking hot and being fun. On which note, we have plans on Friday."

"We do?"

"Yeah. Miller's hosting." That was good. She liked Miller – he was about the only one of Bellamy's crowd who wasn't an absolute arse to her. "Find something to wear."


	2. Chapter two

Clarke had things to accomplish if she was going to this party of Miller's on Friday.

Choosing a dress would be the easy part, she hoped. She had a small wardrobe of items similar to the one she had worn a couple of weeks ago, that her well-intentioned but somewhat misguided mother had purchased for her in the hope of nurturing something resembling a mother-daughter relationship.

More challenging would be finding the time to return her library books. She had a feeling that this priority wasn't necessarily compatible with her new _fun_ persona, but dammit, she didn't want a fine and she didn't want to disappoint the librarians, most of whom she was on first name terms with by now. She could still remember that day about four years ago when she'd tried to return a book that was all gross and damp-stained from where Bellamy had thrown her school bag into the gutter while it was inside - she didn't think she'd ever quite recovered lovely Jasmine's esteem. She'd been a regular at the library on Friday nights since she was old enough for her mother to let her leave the house by herself, but Raven was insisting that they needed to hang out straight after school on Friday to perfect her hair and makeup – how that could take literal _hours_ was something of a mystery to her – and this left her with rather a problem. She had originally chosen Friday as library night in large part because the place was always deserted then while other people were having a life, but also because it was the only night when she didn't do anything else after school – again with the whole _other people having a life_ thing.

So what was she to do this week about returning her library books?

In the end, she decided she would have to skip Maths clinic and go on Thursday. She didn't like to skip these optional sessions, because studying medicine was a big goal, but she had to acknowledge that she did not, in fact, have any questions at all about anything that had been covered in Maths recently. Or ever, really. She just liked to go to the extra sessions because they made her feel better. Sort of comfort-blanket Maths clinic.

It turned out that the library on a Thursday in those after-school-early-evening hours was pretty damn similar to the library at the same time on a Friday, only with slightly more people, and the amount of awkward whispering reached something of a gentle hum of quiet background noise. She returned her due books, and set off on a wander around the familiar shelves with their comforting contents, picking up a novel here and a biography there as she went. Utterly absorbed in her browsing, she was caught by surprise when she walked straight into a rather firmly muscled chest.

"Sorry." She whispered automatically, and the owner of the firmly muscled chest did the same.

Then he recognised her, and his tone changed abruptly.

"Princess? What the hell are you doing here?" Of course, it was Bellamy, and he was struggling to remember that one was supposed to whisper in a library. She was going to have to find a way to turn this to her advantage for the good of the plan, but it wasn't immediately clear to her how she might achieve that.

"You do seem to ask me that a lot, Bellamy. It will hopefully not surprise you to know that I am borrowing books, because that is in fact the purpose of a library." She was almost certain that sarcasm would in no way help her to avenge her chicken salad sandwich, but damn was it satisfying. She was pretty sure, too, that Bellamy wouldn't understand the point of a library if it hit him in the face. Or, well, she _would_ have been, until about thirty seconds ago, when she walked into him here. This was turning out to be quite a surprising afternoon.

"I'm surprised your mummy doesn't buy you all the books you could ever want." Not so surprising, then. He was still being his usual self.

"She's not really into buying me novels. Or stuff about Art History. Or anything that won't help with the whole med school thing really." She tried to shrug it off, but this had always been something of a sore spot for her.

"Does she actually care whether or not you want to be a doctor?" It shocked her that the bothered to ask, and shocked her even more that his tone softened as he did so.

"No. But thankfully I do want to, so that's something." She shrugged. "I presume you're also here to borrow books? What have you found?" After all, there was no other reasonable explanation for his presence. She let her natural curiosity get the better of her and lost sight of the fact that she was supposed to be seducing him, not comparing reading material.

"Oh, mostly history." He held his finds out awkwardly, and she couldn't help but notice that a large hardback about the Peterloo Massacre seemed to be obscuring a smaller paperback.

"Oh. I knew you were studying history, but I never realised you were actually, you know, into it. No offense." He laughed at her words, more loudly than was probably wise given their location.

"None taken. I don't exactly seem like the library type at school do I?"

"You said it, not me. Here, what's this?" She reached for the book he appeared to be hiding, and he recoiled back from her.

"Nothing important."

"Come on, I want to see." She was warming up to the idea of a good chat about books and found herself feeling brave enough to reach forward and grab the offending paperback from his arms.

"The Art of Love? What the hell is this?" She asked, and if she hadn't know it was impossible, she could have sworn that he looked suddenly shy.

"It's a Classical Roman poem about how to pick up women. Which obviously I am not borrowing because I want some dead guy's opinions on how to pick up women." He hastened to assure her and she giggled softly.

"No. From what I hear, you don't exactly need his advice." She teased.

"Thank you – I think? Anyway, it's supposed to have some cool political and cultural references, also the author got exiled for writing it, so yeah, it's more than just creepy, I promise."

"I believe you." She told him, her tone clearly indicating that, in fact, she remained skeptical.

"What about you? What have you found?" He asked her, gesturing awkwardly to the books in her arms in spite of being rather encumbered himself.

"Nothing as exciting as you have, I'm afraid. A biography of Frida Kahlo and a couple of trashy historical novels."

"Historical novels? You, Clarke Griffin, school chess champion and future doctor, read historical fiction?" She briefly allowed herself to bask in the fact that he had noticed she was rather bright. It probably wouldn't help her to seduce him – in fact, quite the opposite – but it was strangely flattering all the same. "You are aware that historical fiction is neither good history nor good fiction?"

"Oh, shush. We can't all be history nerds like you."

"Thank you. I choose to take that as a compliment." He grinned, and she found herself wondering how this could possibly be the same Bellamy Blake who'd been tormenting her for a decade.

"How come I've never seen you here before?" She asked suddenly, wondering whether perhaps this was all some complicated joke of which she was the butt. Most things involving Bellamy did turn out like that in her experience.

"I could ask you the same question. I've been coming here pretty much every Thursday for years and I've literally never seen you here before."

"I usually come on a Friday, but I have plans tomorrow." She shrugged and he narrowed his eyes as if figuring something out.

"You coming to Miller's? Continuing your quest for fun?"

"Yeah."

"I'll see you there." With that, he flashed that annoyingly attractive smile that had contributed so much to his popularity, and went on his way, leaving Clarke feeling like she might, in fact, have recently been hit by a small bus.

…...

Of course, normal service resumed the following morning, with a rotten tomato planted in her backpack that left damp sticky seeds all over her Biology homework, leaving Clarke wondering which version of Bellamy she'd be seeing at the party that night. Her favourite old arch nemesis, or the smooth and confident boob-starer, or the adorably nerdy library dweller? Did she just use the word _adorable_? How awkward. That was clearly an error. With a heavy sigh, she handed in the ruined work and made for her desk.

"What happened there, then?" Monty asked her, visibly confused.

"Bellamy Blake happened." She stated with venom. "Also a tomato."

"Say no more, say no more. You should plan some great prank, get some revenge. Tomatoes in his _rugby boots_?"

"Don't you worry, Monty. I've got a plan."

…...

She walked into the crowded hallway that night feeling moderately confident. She'd got one of these party things successfully under her belt already, and she felt that she knew the lay of the land now. She'd got three whole friends with her, and one of them had voluntarily given up a good deal of time today to curl her hair and she had to say, she was reasonably pleased with the result.

She felt the metaphorical rug pulled out from under her feet the moment Emori Sands walked up to her and hugged her, with a perky "Clarke, Raven, guys, so glad you could make it!"

She was not used to being hugged by passing acquaintances. OK, to be fair, she did have two classes with Emori, and Raven shared every subject with the girl, and she'd never been anything but friendly and seemed like genuinely a good sort. Add in the fact that she wanted to become an aeronautical engineer and made no secret of it, and really, she would have been a logical choice of friend for the whole group of them.

There was one major point in her _dis_ favour, however. For reasons that remained unclear to literally everyone in the entire world, she was dating John Murphy, one of Bellamy's closest followers, and had been since mere days after she transferred to the school that September. And if there was one thing that made Clarke uncomfortable, it was girlfriends of friends of Bellamy Blake hugging her for no good reason. But, it occurred to her, she was likely to have to get used to his circle of friends if she was going to successfully break his heart, so she hugged her new pal back and asked her to lead the way to the drinks.

She was getting good at this.

…...

It didn't take long for her to find Bellamy – or for him to find her. Barely had she grabbed her first drink (this time in a can, rather than a red cup, but she was determined to go with the flow) and started heading towards the makeshift dancefloor when he popped up in her path.

"Princess." He nodded at her, and she waited for the rest of his insult but it never came.

"Bellamy."

"You're looking good." That caught her by surprise a bit, the brazenness of it, as he raked his eyes down her tight purple dress.

"Find that in your book of ancient Roman pickup lines?" She teased, remembering their conversation the previous day.

"It's not really a book of pickup _lines_ as such." He corrected her with a grin. "More a book of pickup _scenarios_ and pickup _locations_."

"Of course, how foolish of me. Anything in there about whether Nate Miller's house is a viable pickup location?"

"No, it's mostly porticoes and the like."

"Porticoes and the like?" She asked at least a little incredulously.

"Hey, you're the arty one. I'm not even sure I know what a portico is."

"Why should I know about porticoes just because I'm the arty one?"

"Art, architecture, it's basically the same thing, right?"

"You did not just say that, Blake. Oh my god. The depths of your ignorance never cease to amaze me."

"Most girls tend to be more amazed by the depths of my eyes, actually."

"Wow. Just wow."

"That's better. I like you better speechless." He traced one of her neatly pressed blonde curls with his fingertips while she gawked at him, and tried belatedly to rearrange her face instead into that particular smile he seemed to enjoy. "I'll see you around, Princess."

…...

Overconfidence could be a dangerous thing, it turned out. Buoyed by her successful previous attempt at partying, by her not entirely disastrous interaction with Bellamy, and by the fact that she was actually having quite a good time, she made the crucial error of drinking really quite a bit more than she could handle. At approximately 12:37 (OK, it was exactly 12:37, but that didn't seem to be a very party-ish thing to notice) she found herself overcome by a rising tide of nausea and made a dash for the patio.

She didn't throw up, in the end, but there were a good few minutes where _avoiding_ throwing up took really quite a lot of concentration. She did a lot of deep breathing, and repeated to herself various key reminders that fresh air was healthy and invigorating, and tried very hard not to shiver. At length, she decided that she might as well find out what exactly a portico was, because even at her most intoxicated she was a curious soul, so she took out her phone and took only four attempts to spell the word correctly and search the internet for the answer to this pressing question.

That was, of course, how he found her, some minutes later, frowning at a Wikipedia article she was rather too far gone to fully understand.

"Clarke? Is that you?"

"Bellamy! I have the answer!" She shook her phone at him to emphasise her statement.

"That's great, Princess – the answer to what, exactly, may I ask?" He sat next to her, legs dangling off the edge of the patio over the lawn as hers were doing, and angled his torso in her direction, giving her important discovery his full attention.

"I know what a portico is!"

"OK... Care to share?"

"It's... it's... it's like columns and shit. Look!" She thrust the phone, with the article and the photo of a portico, towards him.

"Aha. Columns and shit. Of course. Mind if I have a read?"

"That's probably for the best. I think I need to do some deep breaths and not throwing up for a while."

"Not easy, having fun, is it?"

"Shhh." She hissed, more loudly than was perhaps necessary, because the alcohol seemed to be playing weird games with her senses. She could swear, for example, that she could feel a gentle hand rubbing her back, but that seemed unlikely. It took him longer to read the article than she might have expected, but maybe he was also more drunk than he was letting on, or maybe her current state was affecting her perception of the passage of time. Either way, he eventually gave her phone back and returned his attention to her.

"Thank you for educating me. I did not come to this party tonight expecting to learn about porticoes."

"What did you expect from your evening?"

"You know, drink some beer, dance a bit, hook up with some girl." Aha! This was the opportunity she had been looking for. She could do the hooking up! She told him as much, but he didn't quite seem to understand her.

"What are you on about?"

"You could do hooking up with _me_. We could do hooking up _together_. With _each other_." He was reasonably bright, she seemed to remember, and even into libraries. Why was he being so slow on the uptake about this? To give him the idea, she put a hand on his leg and shuffled a bit closer to him, doing that smiling thing all the while.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Princess."

"Oh." Well, this was bad. This was very bad. She thought he'd been ogling her in this dress and he'd done that playing with her hair thing earlier but he didn't want to hook up with her. How was she supposed to conduct the plan if he wouldn't even hook up with her? "I... Did I do something wrong?" She needed to ask, she decided. It was all in the name of research. "Do you prefer to do hooking up with hotter people?" He put a hand over hers and gently removed it from his leg. This was, to say the least, not at all promising for the future of her scheme.

"It's not that, Clarke." He laughed, slightly, but it sounded a bit devoid of humour. Maybe that was her drunk senses playing tricks on her again. "You're very drunk. I know you probably think I'm a monster, but I don't actually hook up with girls who are too inebriated to know what they want."

"Oh. That's very moral of you."

"I do try. On which note, I think I had better go get Raven and recommend she takes you home, yes? We don't want you to go propositioning someone who's less into the whole informed consent thing." He stood up and started turning to make his way back into the house.

"I don't want to proposition anyone else." He froze at that, and she thought that maybe he would say something, but after opening and closing his mouth a couple of times he decided against it. He tackled the step up onto the patio, and was nearly at the doors when he turned and spoke to her.

"For what it's worth, Clarke, you're plenty hot." Before she had time to collect her wits sufficiently to reply, he was gone.

…...

She woke up the following morning to a raging headache and an unexpected text.

_Hey Princess. Hope you got home safe? Enjoy your well-deserved sore head. B_

Well. That explained why he'd needed to keep her phone for so long to read that one article about porticoes last night.

Raven was still asleep, but she reckoned this constituted enough of an emergency to wake her. She understood that friendships between teenage girls were built on agonising over how to reply to messages from boys, and she was beginning to think that friendships between teenage girls might not be such a waste of time after all.

"Raven?"

"Hrmmm."

"Raven, wake up. I need you."

"What the hell, Clarke, it's like, 8am."

"We have a crisis to deal with."

"We do?" Raven sat up at that, rubbing her eyes blearily.

"I have a text. From Bellamy."

"Holy cow, Clarke, that's great! Progress! The plan is go."

"Yes and no. In other news, last night I suggested we could hook up and he said no."

"Really? He never says no."

"He said it was because I was too drunk to know what I was doing. Also he said I was plenty hot, so there's that."

"Wow. OK. So there are more positives here than negatives, that is for sure. He thinks you're plenty hot and he's sent you a text! This is so exciting."

"This is exciting for the _plan_ , Raven. The plan. Focus. How do I reply to this text to further the plan?"

"Well, how do you want to reply to the text? It needs to sound natural and convincing."

"I knew it didn't take that long to read a Wikipedia article about porticoes."

"What the hell, Clarke? Are you still drunk?"

"That's how I would instinctively reply to that text."

"Wow. Right. What are you even on about?"

"We've been learning about porticoes. He borrowed my phone to read a Wikipedia article about porticoes, and apparently decided we were exchanging numbers at the same time."

"Oh, OK then. In joke. I like it. Go for it."

"You think?"

"Yeah, totally. Potentially a risky strategy, doesn't necessarily increase your chances of getting into his pants any time soon. But it probably does increase your chances of making him actually like you as a person enough for the whole relationship and dramatic humiliating breakup thing."

So she sent the reply, but then of course proceeded to spend the rest of the day agonising about whether that had been the right thing to do. And the majority of the following day, to be fair, because he didn't put her out of her misery until mid-afternoon on the Sunday.

_And yet it seems I got away with it ;-)_


	3. Chapter three

Clarke knew what she was expecting on Monday morning. She'd got the hang of it now – they would have chats in the library, and hang out under the influence of alcohol and low-cut dresses and a relaxed atmosphere at a party, and even exchange the occasional text about porticoes, and then at school, when there were actual people whose opinions he cared about watching, he would revert to being an absolute arse to her.

It came as no surprise, therefore, when a paper plane arrived on her desk, scarcely missing out on hitting her, within minutes of her first attempt to answer a question in Maths. She'd had her fair share of paper planes thrown at her over the years, but this was the first time one had come adorned with the message "Brave, Princess" in large red capital letters. In her defence, it had been a very difficult question, and she didn't see anyone else putting themselves forward to have a go at it. Even Raven had been unwilling to volunteer. So yes, thank you, she did feel a little bit brave.

It wasn't until much later that she realised it wasn't a blank sheet of paper that he'd used. Tucked away in a corner of the common room at lunch break she unfolded it, flattening it carefully onto the table, and saw that it was, in fact, a phenomenally bad sketch of some broadly Classical style columns outlined in black biro. He'd even added a little message at the bottom - "This is why I'm not the arty one." She stifled a laugh, and brought her fingers to her lips so no one else in the busy room would see her smile. There was no reason, she knew, none at all, to feel all warm and giggly about this. It was simply good news for her plan.

All the same, she had a feeling she wouldn't be throwing this particular paper plane away any time soon.

…...

Emori seemed to have started sitting with them in lessons. After some consideration Clarke decided she was OK with this development – her new friend was pretty sharp, and she couldn't think of any objection to her other than her taste in men. On the other hand, that was rather a big objection. Still, she knew that Raven had hit it off with Emori to such an extent that she had no hope of lodging a complaint even if she had wanted to.

"Bellamy's giving Clarke funny looks again." Emori was hissing to Raven now. Clarke wasn't sure what she made of being spoken _about_ rather than _to_.

"Please, he's always giving Clarke funny looks. That's their thing."

"Yeah, obviously, but I think he's doing it more than usual."

"You know, I think you're right." Monty joined in, rather more loudly than Clarke felt was appropriate, from the opposite end of their lab bench.

"Calm down, guys. He's probably just judging me for some stray hair or dreaming up his next plan to humiliate me or something."

It turned out she hadn't been far wrong, she thought, when she opened her locker to find that all three of the homeworks she had due in that day had mysteriously been folded into intricate origami crowns.

…...

She didn't _want_ to go the library on Thursday that week, of course. She wanted to go on Friday, because going on Friday had been her thing for years, and because going on Thursday would mean missing Maths clinic. Admittedly, missing Maths clinic didn't seem to have done her much harm the previous week. All the same, she wasn't going to the library that evening because she _wanted_ to, she reminded herself firmly, as she walked through the doors of her favourite place entirely against her will. No, she was going to the library at this moment in time for the good of the _plan_. Of course, a small, traitorous voice in the back of her head reminded her that he might not even be there, and then she'd have missed Maths clinic for no good reason at all. Also, then she wouldn't get to laugh at his choice of books, and that would be a shame.

A shame for the _plan_ , of course.

She was saved from descending any further into insanity by the sight of a familiar head of dark hair, because of course, after all this worrying, he was right there at the front desk the moment she arrived. He turned around, having finished depositing his due books, and saw her there, and grinned so widely that she had to resist the temptation to turn around and check whether he might, in fact, be attempting to communicate with someone else.

"Hey, Princess." He greeted her in a sort of loud-library-whisper, putting to rest her worries that it might not be _her_ he was happy to see. Since when did he greet her with this much enthusiasm? The world was a confusing place, she decided.

"Hi, Bellamy." She moved towards the desk and handed her books over, greeting the librarian and asking after her young son.

It wasn't until this conversation had lasted a good ninety seconds that she decided it was a bit weird that Bellamy was still standing there.

"Can I help you?" She asked him, wondering if perhaps he had lost his mind, or at least temporarily misplaced it.

"I'm waiting for you. It's a thing people do, sometimes, so that they can then accompany the awaited person in their shared activity."

"Are we sharing this activity, then?" She asked, confused. She was pretty sure they avoided sharing things as a rule.

"Well, someone's got to keep you away from the historical fiction section." The librarian had now finished processing her returns and was waving her out of the way, trying to serve the next person in the queue.

"Historical fiction is not all bad." She insisted. "Come on, there's something you need to read."

"No." He replied. "Absolutely not. I refuse to be influenced by your terrible taste. You will not corrupt me." He continued to protest ineffectually as they walked. All the same, she couldn't help but notice he was still following her.

"I think I will actually." She had arrived at the shelf she was looking for and handed him a book.

" _Imperium_?" He asked, looking unconvinced.

"Yes, it means -"

"I know what it means, Princess. I'm the history nerd, you're the arty one, remember?"

"Yes. Sorry. Anyway, you should read it. You should probably also borrow the second and third parts." She unloaded those from the shelf and handed them over too.

"Hang on, hang on. Surely I should read the first one, first?"

"Yes, I do believe that is how a series works. But you'll be annoyed if you finish it tonight and then have to wait all week for the sequels."

"You seem very confident that I'm going to enjoy this."

"I am. You'll see." She did the winning smile thing, although she had her doubts about whether or not a library was the appropriate venue for it. It seemed she needn't have worried, as he immediately grinned down at her in return.

"In that case, I get to choose your reading material for the week. Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"To the history section, obviously."

"I'm not going to like this."

"Don't worry, there is more to history than just endless descriptions of battles. I read a pretty great book the other week about how sculpture was used as propaganda in the Roman Empire."

"Distressingly, that does actually sound really interesting."

He found the book he was looking for, and added another by the same author for good measure. They had checked out their books and were heading for the door when a thought seemed to strike him.

"Why are you here?" He asked her.

"I think we've already established I'm a fan of the library?"

"No, I mean, why are you here now? You said you've been coming on Fridays for years. Don't tell me there's some great social event happening tomorrow that I'm not invited to?" He arranged his features into a sort of mock-pouty-face and she laughed aloud, earning a disapproving glare from an older gentleman in an unseasonably large jacket.

"Yeah, actually, my mother's holding a dinner party." She rolled out her pre-prepared excuse.

"Oh. Try not to enjoy that too much. For a moment there I thought you might actually have been trying to run into me. See you around, Princess." He flashed that smirk at her, and left the building, and started walking home.

…...

She was woken up at 1:17am by the realisation that she had been something of an idiot and left her phone on loud overnight. Also by a text from a certain arch nemesis.

_Damn you. I need to sleep but I also need to finish this book. Admit it, this is all some nefarious plan to sabotage me for that Maths test tomorrow._

It was followed moments later by another.

 _Crap, it's now today_.

She contemplated her response for a moment. She ought to be tactical here, she needed to end up in his pants. But she sort of wanted to follow Raven's judgment from last weekend that she should trust her instincts.

_Did you just use the word nefarious in a text? Nerd._

…...

She was a little surprised when a pellet of paper landed on her desk half way through the Maths test, because she thought they had been tentatively starting to move past such things as throwing things at each other in the classroom. Remembering the paper plane, she decided she may as well flatten the paper out just in case – perhaps it was some pun on _nefarious_ , or a comment on her taste in books. She found herself rather excited at the idea, because _passing_ _notes_ in lessons, as opposed to just throwing things, was clearly the ultimate sign that the plan was going well. Especially if he was willing to risk the ire of a teacher discovering him in the act during a test. He must really want to share a joke with her, she decided, beginning to uncurl the scrap of paper.

She was rather disappointed, therefore, to find that it contained only three characters: _Q7?_

Well, it seemed she had got excited for nothing. Or for very little, at least. He didn't want to share a joke with her at all, he just wanted her to tell him the answer to a question. And now she was in an impossible situation, because she really wanted to win his trust and make the plan work and things, but she really didn't want to cheat in a test. What if it got back to her mother? What if it affected her reference for university? No, that decided it. She couldn't help him with question seven. He would have to struggle alone.

She made eye contact with him and shook her head slightly, then realised that had been the wrong move. If she wanted to pretend that she couldn't do the question, she should have shrugged. Now he was probably going to realise that she did know how to answer it but was choosing not to help, and that might set the plan back quite some way.

In to the midst of this train of thought came another pellet of paper, slightly bigger this time. She unravelled it and read his note.

_Come on. It's basically your fault I'm failing._

She shook her head again, and met his eyes with what she hoped was an apologetic expression.

Too late, she realised that Emori, sitting across the room, had caught the entire exchange.

…...

She knew eavesdropping was bad, and that one supposedly only heard bad things about oneself if one did so, but she couldn't exactly help it. They were right there, in the middle of the common room, and not exactly being subtle about it, because clearly subtlety was something John Murphy and Bellamy Blake were not quite capable of.

"I've just heard the funniest story, Blake. Emori reckons you were _passing notes_ to Princess Griffin in Maths this morning."

"Huh, please. As if I'd ever want to talk to _her_." Of course, she hadn't exactly been expecting him to defend her, but this brazen attack when he could see she was within earshot seemed a bit much.

"Calling my girlfriend a liar, then, are you?" The chill in Murphy's voice was unmistakable, and she rather wondered how Bellamy was going to talk himself out of this one.

"Of course not. I was just asking for the answer to a question." Of course, she mused. She'd heard it said that all the best lies were based on facts. "She's insufferable. It's not like it'd be any trouble to her to help, but it seems she's too good to help out the likes of me." He shrugged and she found herself feeling a little stung.

"Thought it must be something like that." Murphy was saying, apparently satisfied with his friend's explanation.

"Obviously. She's a stuck up brat, it's not like we'd be having a _conversation_."

…...

The final bell had long since rung, but she had found herself caught up in compiling a list of her Biology teacher's recommendations for further reading, and however much she just wanted to go home, she knew that this would help her with her medical application so she sat still for the fifteen minutes the well-meaning bloke droned on for. And she supposed that, when she was in a better frame of mind, she would remember again that she was actually quite interested in reading about mosquito-borne diseases. Eventually she found herself excused, and trudged back to the main building and her locker. Everything seemed like a bit more of an effort than it had this morning, and she couldn't help feel it was all because of that conversation she'd overheard earlier. Not because she was offended, as such, of course. Bellamy's honest opinion meant less than nothing to her. She was just disappointed that it seemed like she was destined to continue to be the butt of all his jokes, and never get her revenge.

She shuffled into the common room, eyes fixed on her locker in the far corner, and therefore failed to notice that the last person she wanted to see right now was sprawled across one of the sofas.

"Hey, Princess." She swung around in surprise as he continued. "Turns out you might have decent taste in books after all." He was gesturing to the second part of the series she'd made him borrow from the library the previous day, and she found herself utterly confused.

"Excuse me, are you attempting to start a _conversation_? Because I have it on good authority that we don't have those." He was silent for a moment, mouth hanging open in a way that made him look rather foolish and rather less attractive than normal, she thought. It seemed she had, in fact, succeeded in making him feel at least somewhat uncomfortable. After a long couple of seconds he evidently decided to paste his usual smirk back onto his face and try to play the whole thing off as nothing.

"Please, Princess, we take the piss out of each other but then chat about books. It's what we do." He tried for a nonchalant shrug.

"Taking the piss out of each other? Yes. Agreed. Being really quite rude and insisting I'm not worth even speaking to? Just to protect your precious alpha male position and impress your vile cronies? Not so much." He was doing the stupid gaping thing again, and she stuffed books into her backpack and decided she needed to get out of there as soon as possible. She was at the door, hand on the handle, by the time he decided how to respond.

"Clarke? You're right. That was too far. I... I like our conversations." She turned slowly and wondered how she was supposed to respond to that.

"I should hope so. I am very good at fun, after all." She smiled just enough to let him think that he was basically forgiven, and made her way down the corridor, her legs and heart feeling quite a bit lighter. Because of the _plan_ , of course. She felt optimistic again about the plan.

…...

When she received three texts in the space of forty-two minutes that evening, she realised that it was probably his way of apologising for being so rude earlier. After all, exchanging lighthearted banter about reading material was a lot more straightforward than telling his arch nemesis that he was sorry.

_This series is so good. How have I never read this before?_

_Not that this means historical novels are acceptable, mind you. I just really like the Romans._

_I swear, if you tell anyone that I'm actually a closet nerd, I will tell everyone that you read historical fiction._

She wanted to reply with something fun and witty, but she wasn't quite sure how, so she responded with the truth instead.

 _I believe you've met my friends. I don't think they'd care_. _Unless I was secretly a rocket scientist, that might provoke a reaction._

_You may have a point. Aren't you supposed to be at a dinner party?_

Ah. That could have gone better.

She left that unanswered for an interval of time that she hoped conveyed that she was very much occupied with wining and dining at her imaginary social engagement and was squeezing in this conversation round the edges.

_Book chat beats dinner parties any day_

_How are the statues?_

She almost replied immediately, gushing about the book she was actually reading at that very moment, but then she remembered she was supposedly otherwise engaged and forced herself to wait a decent interval until her non-existent guests had hypothetically departed.

_They're pretty great. I feel like Augustus must have been a bit of a legend. That Prima Porta statue? Wow._

_Don't even get me started on Augustus._

_Huh?_

_It'll make sense next week._

Now that, she thought, was cryptic, to say the least.


	4. Chapter four

Clarke was having a pretty terrible Monday, as Mondays went.

Her mother had an early start at work, and was, of course, incapable of telling her this to her face beforehand, so she had woken up at her usual time only to find the house eerily quiet and a post-it adhering to the fridge telling her to walk or get the bus. Now, as it happened, contrary to some popular beliefs that she was a spoiled brat, she was, in fact, perfectly capable of using public transport or her own two feet. But doing so did take rather longer than getting a lift with her mum, so she now found herself decidedly late.

Then she opened the front door and saw the rain. And it wasn't just a bit of a light shower, no, it was absolutely bloody pouring, as it does only in small northern towns, and showed no sign of ceasing to do so in the immediate future. So, therefore, being a creature of logic she went in search of an umbrella. And, sod's law being what it was, she did not find an umbrella.

So it was that she found herself in the corridor on the way to her first lesson, soaked, late, and decidedly grumpy.

Then, of course, it got worse, because of course _he_ was also late and grumpy, and of course he walked straight into her, and made her books go flying, and spilled his cup of coffee on her _hair_ , of all places, and she seriously contemplated just sitting in the puddle that her dripping clothes were forming and weeping until the day was over.

"Watch where the fuck you're going, Princess." He was, it appeared, also having a terrible Monday, but she would appreciate it if he didn't take it out on her. She felt her own anger rising to match his.

"Hey, you were the one who ran into me. And spilled coffee all over me."

"Please, no one will notice. You already look like a drowned rat." Well, ouch. That was unnecessary. What happened to being _plenty hot_? She knew she didn't look her best right now but he didn't need to rub it in. "Mummy's chauffeur got the day off?" That was the last straw.

"Drop the act, Blake." She snapped at him. "We both know you're perfectly capable of being civil to me. And there's no one else here to see your little show." He frowned in silence for a moment, then placed his half-empty coffee cup safely out of the way and started to help pick up her books.

"I'm sorry. I'm not having a good morning, not that it's any excuse." He said softly. "Looks like you're not having a great morning either?"

"For the record, I am perfectly capable of getting the bus." She informed him, not that he'd asked. "I just appreciate it when my mother actually tells me I need to get myself to school, rather than leaving a bloody post-it note on the fridge, as if that's parenting. And then I couldn't find a damn umbrella, and -"

"Here." He interrupted her, holding out a packet of tissues. "I'm afraid it's the best I can do. Chemistry?"

"Thanks." She accepted the tissues, and took a calming breath. "Yeah. Chemistry."

They walked in companionable silence for a while, and she worked on drying her belongings and patting ineffectually at her hair.

"Want to talk about your morning?" She asked him eventually.

"Not really. Can we get back to books?"

"Sure. How's Cicero?"

"Not well. They cut his hands off, you know."

"Thanks for that." She elbowed him playfully in the ribs, and he yelped and made a big show of not dropping his coffee. "I meant, how are the books?"

"Nearly finished. I had to take a bit of a break on Saturday to play some rugby and do some homework. It seemed a good idea as I rather failed that Maths test on Friday." He grinned at her, and she found herself smiling back.

"Sorry about that."

"You do understand that it isn't _actually_ your fault, I was just engaging in good-natured teasing?"

"Thank you so much for explaining that to me, Bellamy. What would I do without you to interpret my every social interaction for me?" She rolled her eyes as she spoke, laying the sarcasm on thick.

"You'd miss out on a lot of fun. On which note, I'm hosting a bit of a gathering this Saturday. Hopefully not a full-blown vomiting in the flowerpots kind of rave, as my thirteen-year-old-sister will be there... Anyway, you should come. And bring Raven and Jasper and Monty and Emori, if they're keen."

"Yeah. Thanks. Sounds great." It was, she thought, a good job that they had arrived at the Chemistry lab, because she found herself surprisingly short of coherent and witty things to say.

A party that Bellamy wanted _her_ specifically to go to? A small party at the Blakes', with _her and all her friends_ invited?

They made their apologies to the teacher and took their seats, and she found herself wondering why it was that they always sat on opposite sides of classrooms. It was quite difficult to chat about books, or porticoes, or Augustus, or anything much across a crowded room. Maybe one day, she thought, they might consider changing that.

Raven's voice broke into her thoughts.

"You OK? You look like a drowned rat."

"Yes, that's what Bellamy said, too."

"Oh."

"But then he invited me to a party at his, so I think we're still good."

"The plan is going from strength to strength." She could see Raven practically glowing with glee.

"What plan?" Emori, who was sitting the other side of Raven, interrupted.

"Nothing." Clarke rushed to assure her. "Bellamy said you guys should all come on Saturday as well, by the way."

"Come to what?" Jasper, sitting at the far end of the bench, seemed to be struggling to keep up.

"A party at Bellamy's. On Saturday." Monty explained to him a little too loudly. What was it with Monty and always speaking a little louder than discretion would have it?

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." Raven assured her, tone full of mischief.

…...

She should have learned her lesson last Friday. When she heard Murphy talking about her as she walked past the door of the common room, she should have turned and run away as fast as her legs could carry her, and buried her nose in a book about Roman statuary.

But, of course, she did not. Again with the insatiable curiosity.

"Tell me it's not true. Tell me you did not invite Princess Griffin to this piss-up you're throwing on Saturday?" She was beginning to see Emori's taste in men as a definite _weakness_ , she decided. She couldn't see how else the news could have got back to him so quickly.

"It is not a piss-up, Murphy. O will be there."

"That is so not the point. You invited her?"

"Yes."

"Why? You hate the girl."

"I guess we have some classes together this year and I've got to know her a bit better."

"I call bullshit. We all saw her in that dress at Mbege's the other week. You're just trying to get into her pants." She felt herself blush at that.

"It's not like that, Murphy. We're friends, I guess. And if I were you I'd stop talking about her like that. I don't like it, and I don't imagine Emori would either." She heard the finality in his tone and realised it was her cue to walk away, but was slightly hampered by her shock at what Bellamy had just said. Friends, huh? That was an interesting development, she thought. She had missed her chance at running away – here he came, right at that moment, striding out of the room. He came to an abrupt stop when he saw her there, and for a horrible second she thought he was going to revert to some _Precious Princess_ jibe and ruin the wonderful fact that he had just defended her to Murphy.

For the first time in this whole grand scheme she didn't think about what she was doing. She just let her happiness shine forth in possibly the biggest and definitely the most genuine smile she had ever shown him.

Her day only got better when he smiled right back at her as he walked by.

…...

By the final period of the following day, she thought her cheeks might be starting to ache. And, quite possibly, her brain was in danger of reverting to jelly through sheer lack of use. It turned out she wasn't exactly a sparkling genius when she was this preoccupied with exchanging cheerful facial expressions with a boy. She wondered if anyone else had previously done research on that topic. Perhaps the phenomenon of hot boys smiling at one being bad for brain function was already well documented?

"Earth to Clarke? Stop making doe eyes at Blake and measure out the water." Raven was poking her with a measuring beaker.

"Since when am I on water duty? I called shotgun on the sodium hydroxide!" She was a future doctor. She deserved better than measuring out _water_ , when there were cool chemicals to be played with.

"Since you stopped listening to a word we were saying." Raven continued to prod her incessantly with the beaker. "I decided it was safer to put you on water duty."

"I was totally listening." She insisted, but it seemed she was destined not to be believed.

"Listening so carefully you didn't notice we put you on water duty..." Emori muttered under her breath.

"Why are you two ganging up on me today?"

"Because it's funny." Raven offered.

"Because it's adorable." Emori added.

"It is neither funny nor adorable." She insisted firmly. "Also, I don't know what _it_ is. Obviously. Because there is no it."

"Sure, sure." Raven nodded. "Obviously, nothing to see here. Now get the damn water." She shoved her good-naturedly in the general direction of the distilled water tank, and she breathed a sigh of relief that her grilling was apparently over and she could get back to enjoying Bellamy's grinning at her in peace. She'd taken three steps before she heard Raven and Emori's laughter and realised that they hadn't decided to let her off the hook after all.

Bellamy was on water duty too, it seemed.

"Princess." He nodded, and tried to rearrange his features to a sort of impassive expression, but she knew him better than that by now.

"Blake." She smirked slightly and raised an eyebrow.

"After me." He stepped in front of her and took first turn at the water tank, and she giggled slightly.

"Rude." She accused him.

"Only to you." He flashed her a grin and retreated back to his desk, leaving her blinking slightly at his retreating back. She thought that was probably the most civil conversation they'd ever had in earshot of other actual people. Clearly the plan was progressing rather nicely.

She had the beaker under the tap and was about to turn it on when she realised that there was a folded slip of paper in it. It turned out there was no subtle way to remove a note (or just a scrap of paper, it might just be a scrap of paper, she reminded herself) from a beaker in a lab full of people, so she took a deep breath and just went for it. She made sure to fill the beaker as calmly and nonchalantly as possible, and then carried both her precious burdens back to her desk.

"Thanks, Clarke. Good job." Raven took the beaker from her hand. "We'll take it from here while you attend to your correspondence."

"Wha- what?"

"The note Bellamy just passed you." Emori contributed cheerfully. "Which, obviously, he felt the need to give you just to prove to us that there is nothing at all going on. Go ahead, read it, we got this." She turned back to the apparatus set up in front of her, and Clarke found herself noting that she had absolutely no idea what practical they were supposed to be performing.

"It's not necessarily a _note_." She informed them, standing on her dignity. "He might just have dropped a piece of paper. Or he might be trying to insult me somehow."

"Yeah. Of course." Emori agreed with a substantial dose of sarcasm. " _That's_ why he's currently staring at you and waiting for you to read it."

"He is?" She squeaked, and turned to look, just in time to catch him return his gaze to his desk.

"Wow." Emori responded. "Yep. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all."

She decided to ignore her friend in favour of satisfying the itch of curiosity that was currently insisting she needed to find out what was on that piece of paper.

_I was going to share a joke about sodium hydroxide but I decided it was too basic._

She thought she did a good job of stifling her laughter against the palm of her hand, but clearly she fooled very few people. Monty, of course, noticed and decided it was appropriate to practically yell an inquiry about what was so funny from his seat at the other end of the bench. Emori patted her gently on the shoulder, as if worried she was going to combust, and Raven snatched the note away from her for inspection.

"Chemistry puns? Nice. Did not think he had it in him. What is he, some kind of closet nerd or something?"

"I couldn't possibly comment." After all, he didn't want her to tell anyone that he was actually interesting and intelligent and occasionally even thoughtful and things. For some reason, he seemed determined to keep the best of himself firmly under wraps.

…...

Homework done for the evening, she curled up on her bed with a sketchpad, her favourite set of pencils, and the book about Roman statues. She felt she had earned some quality drawing time, what with all the effort she'd been putting into the plan of late.

Not that it was exactly a chore, she had to admit. Turned out that, however much she obviously still detested him, Bellamy could be pretty fun. On which note, she reckoned she was probably supposed to acknowledge that joke from earlier. Or at least acknowledge it in more detail than just grinning across a chemistry lab at him. Perpetuating shared jokes seemed like the kind of thing someone auditioning for the role of vengeful fake girlfriend ought to try. She reached for her phone and sent him a text.

_That was awful. Worst pun ever. Also Raven now suspects you of being a closet nerd._

She put her phone to one side and had achieve a grand total of three curved lines and a good deal of frowning before it next buzzed. She reminded herself that it was perfectly possible that it was another notification and he hadn't replied so soon, but realistically she received so few messages that it was almost certainly him.

… _A charge against which you defended me, of course. Vigorously._

_Something like that._

She sort of presumed that was it for the evening – she hadn't exactly given him a lot to work with there – so she was surprised when, about an hour later, he interrupted her sketching again.

 _I finished_ Dictator _and now I don't know what to do with myself. What is all this free time?_

_Have you considered interrupting my sketching time? It seems you enjoy doing that._

_You wound me! Hint taken. See you tomorrow._

She persevered with serious drawings of classical statues for a while. When that wasn't working for her she tried landscapes, and then she carried on working on a portrait of her mother that she was loosely thinking might be a birthday gift. When none of these things seemed to be going her way, frustrated and restless, she allowed herself to draw what she'd had at the forefront of her mind all evening.

She had to admit, when she was finished, that it was really quite a good caricature, especially considering it was her first attempt at the genre. She hadn't got as much detail on the cuirass as she'd have liked – after the paper plane and a tomato and a few history books she'd run out of inspiration for that. But the authoritative pose was spot on, and the little baby-Murphy-caricature in place of the cupid was a nice touch, she thought. Her proudest achievement was definitely the hair, the way the dark curls fell over his forehead just as in real life.

All in all, she felt that the _Prima Porta Bellamy Blake_ was quite a sound piece.


	5. Chapter five

She knew a brief moment of horror when she woke up that Wednesday morning, because she was pretty sure spontaneously drawing Bellamy was not part of her plan to avenge herself for the loss of her late lamented lunch.

Well, she would just have to adapt the plan, then. Because obviously that drawing had a part to play, somehow. It was inconceivable that she could be sketching him because she wanted to do so for its own sake, so she would simply have to make use of the picture for the greater good.

Inspiration came to her in a flash whilst she was in the shower, and she set out to school with determination in her step. First period was Maths, and without further ado, she sat down, arranged her books neatly on her desk, and then folded her beautiful sketch straight down the middle. She felt a brief pang of regret, because it really was a pretty decent drawing, but it needed to serve a purpose and this was how best to achieve that. She sharpened the crease carefully and continued folding until she had a serviceable paper plane. When their cheerful and somewhat unobservant teacher turned her back, she took a deep breath and sent the plane spiraling over to Bellamy's desk.

" _Throwing_ things at him, Clarke?" Raven asked in disbelief. "That does not seem an effective way of seducing the guy."

"So she _is_ trying to seduce him?" Emori demanded. "I knew it."

"Trust me." Clarke said. "And Emori, if one word of this gets back to John, I will scream loudly and publicly in a way that you will not like."

"My lips are sealed." She hastened to assure her. "No screaming will be necessary."

They were interrupted by the aforementioned cheerful and somewhat unobservant teacher demanding that they work on their problems more quietly, and Clarke stifled a giggle because, really, it seemed unlikely that she would be getting many problems done today. Bellamy had unfolded the picture as soon as the coast was clear and was now staring down at it with a look of such utter undisguised _delight_ that she felt a wave of guilt wash over her at the thought of the many things she was keeping disguised from him. He honestly appeared to think that having this particular paper plane thrown at him was the best thing that had ever happened, and was mouthing the word _wow_ at her, and for the first time she found herself wondering if maybe _she_ was in danger of becoming the bad guy here, rather than Bellamy-arch-nemesis-Blake.

She shook that thought off and smiled back at him, offering a little affected shrug to convey that she couldn't help being an artistic genius, then proceeded to get on with pretending to do her problems.

When she turned to look back at him, eight minutes later, he was still carefully flattening out her drawing and gazing at it with an expression that she could only describe as _awed_.

"Mr Blake? Anything you care to share with the class?" Well, this had gone poorly. He'd been caught, and now the whole class would know that she'd thrown him the drawing. And therefore that she'd been drawing him in the first place.

"No, Mrs Kane. Not at all." He replied smoothly, and pasted on his trademark smirk. "I just really enjoy a good spot of calculus."

She daydreamed her way through the rest of the lesson and was caught rather unawares when it was over.

"Can I walk to your next lesson with you? I seem to remember History and Art History are basically next door to each other?" He was standing next to her desk the moment the bell rang, and she almost fell off her chair in surprise. She was pretty sure that walking to lessons together was not a thing they did. If she'd realised that it could be as easy as this to creep closer to her revenge she'd have started throwing sketches at him a long time ago.

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, they are." Somewhat flustered, she scrabbled about her desk for all her sheets and shoved a handful of stationery into her pencil case.

"So that drawing is pretty amazing." He told his shoes, appearing for all the world as if he was actually somewhat nervous, while she continued to pack up in a great hurry and therefore rather slowly.

"Please, you're just flattered." She teased him. "You've always fancied yourself as a glorious benevolent dictator."

"What can I say? You know all my secrets." By now she had successfully marshaled her school supplies and they started walking. "But seriously, though, thanks."

"You're welcome. I figured it was about time I threw something at you. I've got, what, about a decade of having things thrown at me to make up for."

"Yeah. About that... I'm... sorry, you know, for all the times I took it too far." She hadn't been expecting that. Lighthearted chatter about _columns and shit_ she could deal with, but heartfelt apologies seemed a bit _involving_.

"Heh, I'm over it." She lied, shrugging. "I hear it's not _fun_ to hold a grudge."

"You're incredible, you know that?" He sounded rather in awe of her, she thought, and it scared her a little.

"I think that was a compliment."

"It was." He confirmed, turning aside into his next classroom. "Believe me, it was."

…...

She wasn't sure why she had received a text, because she had seen all the people who usually texted her within the last eight minutes. It being a Thursday, Jasper was going to Maths clinic and dragging Monty with him, because it was utterly inconceivable that one of them should go anywhere without the other. Raven was going to a crossfit class, because she was frankly terrifying like that, and Emori was off to model aeroplane club, because she was an absolute legend. Clarke thought it required a whole new level of awesome to be the kind of person who could simultaneously attend a model aeroplane club and date one of Bellamy's crowd. The thought that she'd have to cultivate a similar level of awesome if she was to have any hope of successfully dating and dumping Bellamy himself, whilst still being Clarke herself, was rather intimidating. Of course, as of thirteen days ago, Bellamy also sometimes texted her, but as he'd thrown a carefree grin in her general direction as she was leaving school literally ninety seconds earlier, it seemed unlikely that it was him. Puzzled and, as ever, curious, she checked her phone.

Well. She'd been wrong before, and she had no doubt she would be wrong again. And probably Bellamy taking the piss would be a feature the next time, too.

_You're going the wrong way, Princess._

_a) Creepy b) What the hell?_

_The library's the other way._

_Why would I be going to the library?_

_I need your help with the Maths homework._

_You do realise there is a Maths clinic that exists for that exact reason and it starts in three minutes?_

_But it's Thursday. I want to go to the library._

_You're ridiculous._

_...And you'll see me at the library in twenty minutes?_

_Yes. I suppose I will._

She wasn't going to turn around and retrace her steps. That would look foolish. And, as it happened, there was a perfectly viable alternative route to the library down this path and past the corner shop where she sometimes bought fruit pastilles.

Not that she'd been planning to go to the library today, of course. The fact that she was following a route that could lead there was irrelevant. She just really liked fruit pastilles.

…...

He was already there by the time she arrived, standing outside and shifting restlessly from foot to foot.

"Hey, Princess."

"Fancy seeing you here."

"For a moment there I was worried you'd decided not to turn up."

"Sorry. I was buying snacks. Fruit pastille?" She offered, holding them out towards him.

"First girl in my entire life to be late to meet me, and it's because you were buying fruit pastilles."

"I'll take that as a no, then." She went to put the pack back in her pocket.

"As it happens, I do actually really like fruit pastilles."

"Make your mind up, Blake." She rolled her eyes and put the pack into his hand.

"Thanks." He unwrapped a fruit pastille carefully, his large hands turning out not to be entirely suited to the delicate task of disentangling paper and foil from sweets.

"You know, I wouldn't even mind if you went crazy and took two. Or more. I may have already eaten four on the walk here."

"Well, if you're offering." He fought with the wrapper a little longer and took a couple more sweets, before handing the pack back to her.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"So what's the plan?" He asked after a silence that lasted a little too long. Neither of them were eating fruit pastilles any more, but they still seemed to be loitering on the pavement, and it was starting to drizzle.

"I seem to remember we were planning to go to the library." She reminded him, brow raised in judgment.

"Yes, yes. Very clever. Maths first, then books?"

"Come on, then." She shoved him cheerfully in the direction of the door with her shoulder and they settled at a small table near the window.

"So, what are you stuck on?" She prompted, as he seemed a bit preoccupied with staring at her. She wondered if perhaps she was accidentally doing the smiling thing, but she was pretty sure she looked more exasperated than anything.

"Oh. Erm. Question three." She tried not to show her surprise at that, because question three was really not at all difficult. Still, it wasn't her place to judge. Although she did wonder if it might have been her place to wonder if this could, perhaps, be a bit of a ruse to get to spend time at the library with her.

"OK. So, this one's all about reading the question." She set about taking him through it, asking him which numbers he thought he needed to put into which calculations, and he caught on rather quickly. There was one point where she found herself thinking that, if anything, she might be slowing this whole operation down, because she kept looking at his mouth when he was speaking, and his eyes when he was reading, and silly things like that.

"Clarke?" He nudged her with his elbow. "So we're done, yes? This is my final answer?" He pointed to the page in front of him, and she nodded slowly.

"Yes. Yes, of course, sorry."

"No worries. So, erm, thanks for your help. I'd pick you over Maths clinic any day." He turned and smiled at her, and his face was really quite close, and she found herself wondering if this would be a good opportunity to further the plan, but she wasn't sure she was quite brave enough to initiate kissing in libraries.

"You're welcome." She said instead, and he turned to put his things away, breaking the tension.

"So, book time?" He asked.

"Was that the only question you needed help with?" She asked him by way of reply.

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, it's just that it's probably the easiest question on the homework, also the fact that question five is almost identical. If I didn't know better, I might start suspecting that you didn't need Maths help at all, but actually wanted me to come to the library with you."

"Funny you should mention that. The thing is, you seem to have recently placed on the desk two massive books about Roman sculpture that you must have dragged all the way to school and back today. And, you know, if I didn't know better, I might start suspecting that the only good reason for you doing that, was that you were planning to come to the library with me all along."


	6. Chapter six

Clarke had absolutely no idea what to expect from _a small party at Bellamy's house_. None of her friends had ever been invited there before, unsurprisingly, so they had very little to go on. She wore a somewhat uncomfortable blue dress that Raven and Emori felt made her boobs look _amazing_ , and allowed her two friends to spend a disproportionate amount of their afternoon curling her hair and doing her make up. Emori in particular had got very much into the idea of Clarke and Bellamy as a potential couple and was expending a great deal of energy in attempting to be helpful. Clarke couldn't help but feel rather awful that she was deceiving this girl who seemed to have decided to befriend her. She also felt awful, although markedly less so, at the fact that they were wasting all this time on her appearance when it was pouring with rain and their work seemed destined to be destroyed the moment she left Raven's house.

"Someone's phone just buzzed." Emori announced to the room at large as she carefully wrapped the next section of Clarke's hair around the curling tongs.

"Yeah, mine." Clarke told her. "Can I get it?"

"Not unless you want your ear burnt." Her friend snapped. "Bellamy can wait a moment, I'm sure."

"It might not be Bellamy!" She rushed to protest. "You two also text me, although to be fair that is not helpful information as you're both right here. It might be Jasper or Monty. Or my mother." It turned out arguing enthusiastically without moving her head was a challenge. Girls must practise for years to perfect this art.

"Whatever." Emori dismissed her. "You're good. Don't take all day, we still have work to do."

In an interesting new development, she had received both a photo of some very muddy socks and a message.

_Why would anyone hold a rugby tournament in this weather? I could have been sitting inside learning about Augustus' military reforms!_

"So, it's from Bellamy, right?" Emori was asking, but she didn't dignify the question with a response.

"Of course it's from Bellamy. Why else would she be grinning like an idiot?" Raven pointed out, and she decided not to rise to that either. She wasn't grinning like an _idiot_. She was just grinning.

She wasn't quite sure how to respond to this text, because she wasn't aware that they talked about rugby. Rugby seemed like the kind of activity he probably discussed with people like Miller and Mbege and co. Also she knew very little about the sport, so she wasn't sure how to have an engaging and seductive conversation about it.

"Reply already, Clarke. We haven't got all day." Raven was threatening to advance on her with the curlers now.

_I'm pretty sure you already know everything there is to know about Augustus' military reforms. Did you win?_

"I need the loo, Raven, you got this?" Emori gestured to the whole hair situation and took herself off in the direction of the bathroom when she received an answering nod.

"You know, Clarke, I'm starting to wonder if, perhaps, you might actually like this boy." Raven teased her as she set to work on her hair.

"What? No. Not at all." She rushed to defend herself.

"Then why have you been doing quite so much smiling recently?" Her friend continued to poke at the metaphorical ants' nest.

"Because I'm excited that the plan is going so well, obviously."

"Of course. The plan. That still on then?"

"Naturally. I've waited a long time for this."

"And you're not having second thoughts now that it's turned out he's actually into you and makes you laugh and is fond of chemistry puns?" She had to concentrate a bit harder on answering that one, because those did sound like quite lovely things that might make a girl have second thoughts, were it not revenge against her arch nemesis that was at stake.

"You think he is actually into me?" She asked in a very small voice.

"Of course I do, Clarke. He's not like this with anyone else, all the idiotic smiling and the whole actually _talking_ thing. Normally just screwing and leaving is more his style."

"How can you be so sure?" Raven took a deep breath, and was refusing to meet her eyes in the mirror, and she had the feeling she wasn't going to like what came next.

"Because I've done the whole screwing and leaving routine, Clarke. With him. A while ago, after Finn. And it didn't mean anything, and it is in no way going to interfere with the adorable thing you guys have going. Or with your plan, if you're still insisting that's what it's called. But, yeah. I know what his normal way of interacting with girls looks like. I've been there. This is different."

"Oh." She thought she ought to say something coherent and carefree that indicated that she was completely unfazed by this new piece of information, but she didn't quite know how. All she could think of was her failed attempt to get him to hook up with her a fortnight ago, and the fact that apparently Raven had succeeded where she had not. Had she perhaps been friendzoned? She had heard people use that term, and he _had_ told Murphy that they were friends.

"For what it's worth, you're in for a treat." Raven was transparently trying to lighten the mood, but she found herself in no frame of mind for innuendos.

"I see." What was Raven doing right that she was doing wrong? How difficult could it be, really, to get the most promiscuous boy in the school into bed? Was she completely wasting both her time and her dignity?

"It really was nothing, Clarke. I was just telling you by way of example of how he's different with you. And I suppose also because I wanted to be honest with you sooner rather than later."

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Are you going to read all those messages I heard you receive now?" Raven tried for a teasing smile as she stepped away with the curlers.

"Yeah. I suppose I ought to. That's what I'd do, if I wanted to seduce him, right? Got to keep to the plan, after all." She felt the need to remind herself as much as Raven.

Emori walked back into the room at that point, oblivious to the somewhat strained atmosphere, and proceeded to declaim some kind of panegyric in praise of the posh hand soap in the bathroom, to which Raven explained that the Sinclairs really liked their high end toiletries. Clarke found herself grateful for the interlude to collect her thoughts and wondered if it made her a failure at being _fun_ if she wasn't that bothered by the fact that Raven's adopted parents were into overpriced cosmetics. Somewhat calmer, she decided to read her collection of texts from Bellamy. Even if she had thus far failed in the field of seduction, she might as well see what he had to say.

_We did not. It went very badly. I won man of the match for the match which went the most badly which I'm pretty sure is a bad thing._

_It was really not good._

_I hope you have a very good supply of book chat lined up for tonight._

And then, sent a good couple of minutes after the others:

_I'm looking forward to seeing you. X_

Well, that settled it. Raven may have managed to hook up with him once upon a time, but she was pretty sure she'd never got a text saying that he was looking forward to seeing her. Also the whole _X_ thing. She was going to treasure that _X_ forever.

For the good of the plan, of course. She was going to treasure that _X_ for the good of the plan.

…...

She was surprised by her own bravery, really, when it came to the hug. It wasn't something she'd ever thought that she'd find herself in a position to _want_ to do, but between the fact he'd obviously had a terrible day and then he'd sent her that text with the whole _X_ thing going on, she felt like it wasn't completely out of place. And when he opened the door he just looked so tired and frazzled and also, she had to admit, distressingly attractive, and then his face actually lit up when he saw her and it was the first time she'd ever really understood that phrase and, well, she threw her arms around him.

Her intention, in as much as she'd had any intention at all, had been for a quick hug of greeting and then to get on with her day. A hug was an acceptable greeting between friends, after all, especially when one party had had a terrible day, so she didn't see that it was completely outside the realms of what was reasonable. But then he hugged her back, hard, and for a bit longer than she thought was strictly appropriate for a cheerful greeting hug between friends, and she wondered if perhaps there was more going on here than she'd quite realised. She also wondered if, maybe, he had already had a drink or two.

"Hey." He said, when he eventually pulled back. "I'm really glad you made it."

"Thanks for the invitation."

"You're welcome. Drinks are at the end of the corridor in the kitchen, folks are mostly in the living room." He pointed her in the general direction, and she went to drop their contribution to the evening off in the kitchen while he greeted her friends.

She couldn't help noticing that he didn't attempt to hug any of them.

........

"You didn't have to bring anything." A rather familiar and unexpectedly warm voice told her as she removed the last of her contribution to the party from her bag.

"I wanted to."

"Fruit pastilles?" He asked, incredulous. "Who brings fruit pastilles to a party?"

"I do." She stated in a tone that brooked no opposition. "You said your little sister would be here, I wanted to bring something she could appreciate." He started looking at her a bit funny after that, and she wondered whether she'd said something wrong.

"Thanks, Clarke. That's really thoughtful of you."

"Also selfish. I get to eat fruit pastilles, and bribe your sister to like me into the bargain."

"I'm pretty sure she will anyway." He commented, helping himself to a drink and offering one to her. She took it, and they stood side by side in the kitchen for a moment, taking sips from their cans for something to do.

"I'm sorry you had a bad day with the rugby." She thought she should probably make an attempt at being understanding towards his troubles, even if she did not, in fact, understand. It seemed like something she probably needed to practise if she was going to make a success of this whole heartbreak thing.

"Thanks. I know it's completely stupid, it's only a sport. I just – I'm supposed to be good at it, you know? People rely on me. And I was sort of hoping I might get some kind of sports scholarship for uni, because my mum certainly doesn't have the money to send me. And to be honest, quite a lot of, you know, that crowd, only really like me for the cool-sports-guy thing." She could rather hear his panic running away with him, she thought, and she decided she had better put a stop to it.

"Those people are stupid. The real you is much more fun."

"That is part of the real me, Clarke." He kicked his trainer against one of the kitchen cupboards. "I'm an arsehole who loves throwing paper planes in lessons, and somehow also a team player who loves sport, as well as a closet nerd who loves books."

"OK." She shrugged, because she was beginning to suspect the real Bellamy Blake would be fun whoever he turned out to be. "I like throwing paper planes in lessons too. We should start a club."

"Yeah." He looked up and she saw the ghost of a grin on his face.

"I don't know much about the game, but I do seem to remember that there's more than one person on a rugby team. I think probably not everything is your responsibility all of the time. Probably you don't need to take the fact that today sucked as a personal failure by you as an individual. And probably the people who give out university sport money also realise that, and look at the bigger picture."

"Thanks, Clarke. You might be right." The grin was a bit more convincing now, and he reached for the fruit pastilles.

"I usually am." She reminded him, and held out her hand in the universal sign for _I demand food_.

"Arrogant much, Princess?"

"True though."

Their usual back and forth was interrupted by a girl with long dark hair flying into the kitchen with a squeal that Clarke reckoned probably indicated either pain or excitement. She sincerely hoped it was the latter.

"Bell! Oh my god, this must be Clarke. You are Clarke, yes? Bell, you have to introduce us!"

"O, I think introducing you might be a bit of a waste of time if you've already worked out that this is Clarke. Clarke, this is Octavia."

"How did you know I was Clarke?" She asked Octavia in some confusion.

"I think I'd probably freak you out if I went through the whole list. So let's just go with the fact that my brother's actually smiling. That was a bit of a giveaway."

"O -" Bellamy looked somewhat embarrassed, she thought.

"C'mon, Clarke, I'm showing you the rest of the house." The younger girl attached herself to her arm and started to tug.

"O, she's here to have fun, not to be your babysitter." Bellamy was protesting.

"I don't mind, really, your sister seems great." Clarke smiled nervously, not sure what the appropriate course of action at this point would be.

"You hear that, big brother? I'm great. You can have her back later." With that they left the room, Octavia clearly used to ignoring her brother's objections.

It became clear, once they had spent twelve minutes in Octavia's bedroom without moving, that the whole _showing her the rest of the house thing_ had been something of a ruse. The younger girl seemed to have no interest whatsoever in showing her any other room in the building but was instead talking at a mile a minute and evidently trying to get to know Clarke as efficiently as possible.

"I like your hair." She commented, something of a non sequitur Clarke thought, as they had in fact been in the middle of a conversation about favourite subjects.

"Thank you." Clarke replied in some bemusement, wondering if there was really such a thing as a good reply to a compliment. "I was worried it wouldn't survive the weather on the way here."

"You're all good. It still looks great. What's your favourite food?" Again with the inexplicable changes of subject.

"Ice cream." That was an easy one, at least. "Yours?"

"Pizza. Favourite TV show?"

"Scrubs. Predictable but true." She could at least have pretended to be fun, she reminded herself. "You?"

"Not important." She was growing a little suspicious now. "Favourite restaurant?"

"I don't particularly have a favourite restaurant."

"OK, ideal first date then?" Aha. So she was being mined for potentially interesting personal information.

"Octavia. What are you doing?" She asked gently, eyebrow quirked.

"Getting to know you." Her new friend said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Did Bellamy put you up to this or something? More ammunition to tease me with?" Octavia looked horrified at the idea.

"No. Goodness me, no. Oh, please don't tell him I was annoying you. He'll be so mad at me. I don't want to ruin everything." She was a little worried the girl might be about to burst into tears, although it wasn't really clear to her _why_.

"Relax, Octavia. I'm not annoyed. I'd like to get to know you too."

"You won't tell Bellamy I was interfering?" Interfering? Interfering with what, exactly?

"Of course not."

"Thank you." Her face lit up with a glowing smile that was not dissimilar to that of her older brother. "Do you want to actually look round the house now?"

"Sure, if you want."

It wasn't a big house, so really this tour consisted of being shown the corridor that led from Octavia's room to the bathroom, past her mother's and brother's respective bedrooms.

"This is Bellamy's." Octavia announced, rather unnecessarily, pointing at a door that had a rugby shirt with the name _Blake_ and the number 11 pinned to the door.

"I guessed." She said, and was about to walk on down the corridor when she realised that, from this angle, she had a good view of the room through the gap where the door had been left ajar. And she didn't want to invade his privacy, obviously, but there was a sheet of paper pinned to the wall above his bed that she was pretty sure she recognised, even from this distance. So it was that, naturally, her resolution not to invade his privacy was broken and she walked straight into his room. Although, to be fair, she was so single-mindedly focused on her goal that she didn't really take in anything else about her surroundings.

"Is this -?" She asked incoherently, reaching for the very familiar caricature, but stilling her hand almost reverently before she actually made contact with it.

"Yep." Octavia confirmed, not even needing to clarify what she was talking about.

"He _kept_ it?" She wondered aloud. "And put it on the _wall_?"

"Yep." Octavia supplied again. "In case you were wondering, he's quite fond of it."

"Why?" She asked, utterly flummoxed, but also not really expecting the girl to give her a coherent answer.

"Because you gave it to him, and I'm not sure if you've noticed, but he's quite fond of you?" She explained, as if it were self-evident. "Also, people don't give him things very often, I guess. Especially not actually heartfelt things. Mum doesn't exactly have the money to spoil him and it's not like his idiotic mates are going to give him personalised drawings." She shrugged.

"But... it's a shitty sketch with a load of creases across it?"

"To be fair, he managed to flatten out quite a lot of the creases."

"That is so not the point. What -" She was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Bellamy calling their names, and looked at Octavia in a state of moderate alarm. She was really going to have to work on controlling her instinct to panic if this whole doctor thing was going to work out for her.

"Octavia? Are you still up there? Is Clarke allowed to come join the party at some point?"

"Hey, big brother." Octavia affected an innocent expression and leaned round the doorframe to greet him. There was a sort of pause, where everything was a little too silent, and then, in a very _controlled_ voice she heard Bellamy speak.

"Why are you in my room, O? Where's Clarke?"

"I'm... erm... I'm in here." She figured he was going to find out sooner or later, and she might as well shift the blame away from Octavia. "I'm sorry, really, we were just walking past and I saw the paper plane and I hadn't realised you'd _kept_ it, and, well, here we are."

"Well of course I kept it." His expression softened immediately on hearing her frantic explanation. "It's a work of art."

"We've not been here long, I promise." Octavia seemed keen to capitalise on her brother's unexpectedly pliant mood. "We mostly hung out in my room and chatted. Did you know Clarke's favourite food is ice cream?"

"What?" Bellamy seemed to have only just noticed that his sister had followed him back into the middle of the room.

"Clarke's favourite food is ice cream. So, you see, I've been entertaining your guest perfectly well. I'm a wonderful sister, really, and you're lucky to have me."

"Yeah, something like that." He replied, and Octavia stuck her tongue out at him, and he responded in kind, and then they were both laughing and he threw his arm around her shoulders. "Are you going to let Clarke actually go to this party at some point, O?"

"She's still admiring your art gallery, I think." Sure enough, Clarke was still utterly transfixed by seeing her sketch in pride of place on his wall as if it were some precious treasure.

"Sorry. We should – yeah. I just can't believe you've put it up there. I mean, it has that big ugly fold right down the middle."

"What can I say? It's the greatest work of art I own." He grinned at her.

"It's the only work of art you own." Octavia chimed in, and that gave Clarke possibly the best idea she had ever had. Or, at least, it seemed that way at that moment in time. She had a feeling it would be good for the plan, she told herself.

"Don't move." She instructed them, where they still stood in their cheesy sibling hug moment. "I promise this won't take long. Then we can go drink beer and eat fruit pastilles." She grabbed a sheet of inexplicably yellow paper from the desk at the foot of the bed, and a pencil, and got to work, leaving the pair of them to giggle about something she couldn't quite hear. Within minutes, a sketch that was basically recognisable as a pair of grinning dark-haired siblings had appeared on the page, and she put her pencil carefully back in the pencil case she had taken it from. Suddenly shy, she walked over and held out her offering for him to inspect.

"Not bad." Bellamy broke the silence. "No creases, so that's a plus. Also I suppose slightly more photorealistic than your last attempt. But is it even a gift if you don't throw it at me in the middle of a Maths lesson?" She elbowed him cheerfully in the ribs at that, and he laughed aloud, and reached the arm that wasn't still holding Octavia around her in a one-armed hug.

"Don't listen to him, Clarke. It's great." Octavia informed her.

"Oh, I know." She grinned at her. "As far as I understand it, that was Bellamy code for _this is an outstanding work of art_ and _I shall treasure it always_ and _thank you so much for the thoughtful gift_."

"So, now we have that settled, can I get on with putting it on the wall?"

…...

She thought this whole party thing was going rather well, as far as she could tell. Admittedly it seemed to have consisted of various slightly unconventional types of fun, what with the deep and meaningful chat in the kitchen, and the getting to know Octavia, and the spontaneous sketching, but she was enjoying herself nonetheless. She was a little apprehensive about going back to the actual _party_ bit of the whole do, because it seemed unlikely it was going to be as enjoyable as what she'd been up to so far. They reached the bottom of the stairs and she supposed this was probably the moment where she was meant to detach herself from Bellamy's side and walk into the living room and practise having conventional fun.

"Hey, O, I meant to tell you. A couple of friends of Clarke's, Jasper and Monty, they were asking about your cactus collection."

"They were?" The younger girl asked, visibly delighted.

"You have a cactus collection?" Clarke couldn't stop herself from asking.

"Yes, she does, and Jasper and Monty were very keen to know more about it." He nudged his sister gently in the direction of the living room. "Jasper's the one wearing the inexplicable scuba diving goggles. Monty will be next to him. You can't miss them." She practically skipped off in the direction of the promised new friends and cactus chat.

"Jasper and Monty were asking about her cactus collection?" She asked, attempting to clarify what was going on here.

"Well, honestly, Jasper mentioned it once. But they're both nice guys and I figured you might want a break from being badgered by my little sister?"

"She's wonderful."

"But also exhausting."

"Yeah, something like that."

"Another drink?" He offered, and steered her towards the kitchen with a hand on her lower back. He really did seem quite _touchy_ today, she thought, and she had her suspicions that the first couple of beers might have gone down him quite quickly. Perhaps losing at rugby was a cause of drunkenness, she wondered.

"I'm good, thanks. Still on this one." She held up the can she'd been carrying around since she first arrived.

"Suit yourself." He shrugged and helped himself to another, and she wondered if perhaps she ought to have asked him whether he was sure that was a good idea. "C'mon. Time for fun." He placed his hand in that same place on her lower back again and ushered her back towards the living room, and she found herself coming to the conclusion that there was definitely something wrong with his inhibitions tonight. It was, she supposed, perfectly possible that he'd been in a similar state at Miller's the other week, but she had herself been too far gone to notice and, anyway, she had to admit that they were much more comfortable with each other now than they had been even a couple of weeks ago.

It was amazing how time flew when she was having fun.

"So I read that kids' book you insisted I had to get yesterday." She had been beyond puzzled when he'd instructed her that it was necessary for her not only to take out a children's collection of stories about the Romans, but also to read the whole thing before she set foot in his house, but it had, in fact, made perfect sense after all the moment she had met his sister. "I take it this means that you managed to read the whole thing and then name your sister after the sister of Augustus when you were _four years old_?"

"To be fair, my mum read the stories to me. I'm not that much of a prodigy. But pretty much, yeah."

"It was strangely prophetic that I drew that picture, huh? You really do fancy yourself as Augustus."

"Not at all." He assured her. "I'm much better looking." He offered with a smirk as they entered the room where all their friends sat around enjoying themselves.

"I don't know." She countered. "I've spent a lot of the last couple of weeks looking at statues of him on _someone's_ insistence, and he seemed like a pretty well put together bloke."

"Are you saying I'm _not_ well put together?" He asked with a provocative grin, but after that conversation they'd had in the kitchen earlier she wondered if she could see just a little bit of insecurity peeping through. All the same, she found her frustration overtaking her sympathy, because it seemed hardly fair to involve her in this conversation when he was, apparently, determined to avoid giving her any opportunity at all to find out whether he was _well put together_.

"I wouldn't know." She reminded him sharply, and marched over to where she could see Raven on the other side of the room.

"Why is Bellamy looking at you like you just kicked his puppy?" Her friend asked by way of greeting.

"Because, in a manner of speaking, I did." She informed her briskly.

"What did you do? He looks seriously miffed."

"Can we talk about something else, please?" She asked slightly desperately.

"OK. Whatever. This is Wick." She gestured to the sandy-haired guy with the misguided facial hair that she remembered seeing once before.

"Hi. Clarke." She introduced herself, and then stood there for a moment wondering what to do next, as it became very obvious that she had, in fact, intruded on a happy prospective couple attempting to get to know each other. She'd thought she'd been getting the hang of this whole _fun_ thing, but she seemed to be struggling at this particular moment in time. With a harassed and largely incoherent "I'll just -" she moved on to Jasper and Monty instead, before realising that was an even worse idea, because Octavia was still holding forth about cacti, and really, she wasn't sure how this evening had gone so wrong so quickly.

Well, she'd been meaning to work on that whole panicking-less-to-be-a-competent-doctor thing. It seemed she had presented herself with the perfect opportunity to get started on that.

"Hey guys." She offered with a cheerful smile and a determined sense of calm. "How are the cacti?"

"I was just explaining to Monty about my watering schedule." Octavia offered brightly, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Monty wasn't interested. You probably had to know the boy, Clarke thought, to be aware that what he was currently doing was his _I am a good sort_ nodding rather than his _I give a damn about what you are saying_ nodding.

"I see. Much as I hate to interrupt, I believe you still haven't told me what your favourite TV show is." She changed the subject with all the subtlety of a piano dropping from a third floor window.

"Why is my brother looking at you like he wants to vomit?" Octavia asked in response, exceeding even Clarke's previous failure at subtlety. It seemed her attempts to talk about anything cheerful were destined to continue to flounder, she thought.

"Maybe he does want to vomit." She shrugged, forcing herself herself to keep her tone light, and not to look over at where he was failing to engage in a conversation with Miller and Stirling. "He has drunk quite a lot, I notice."

"You know what I mean, Clarke. He looks really, I don't know, _bothered_ about something."

"Good for him." She sniped, losing her cool. "Not my problem."

"Why are you being like that?" Her new friend asked with mingled concern and frustration. "And why is he being like that? Did he do something stupid?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Clarke decided not to dignify that with a response, and after an awkward pause in which she seemed to be fishing around for something to say, Octavia continued. "I'm sorry. He's definitely regretting it, anyway. He looks miserable."

"Again, not my problem."

"Clarke -"

"Please." She implored her, and she found herself strangely close to tears. She should be _pleased_ her arch nemesis was miserable, and she thought she probably was pleased, only she was too busy feeling humiliated and confused and also incredibly disappointed for it to quite come through. She wasn't sure she should be feeling those things, but she reassured herself that it was all because she had been so sure the plan was going well tonight.

"OK. So, TV shows?"

…...

She finished her drink before long and decided she may as well get another because it seemed she was unlikely to succeed in her seduction-orientated goals for the evening however sober she stayed. She made her way to the kitchen and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of Emori and John, hands all over each other and firmly attached at the mouth. She had known there had to be something like this afoot, sure, for two such different people to be together, and it wasn't like she was some kind of prude, but she still found herself rather taken aback by the intensity of their make out session. After all, she was watching one of her closest friends have her face eaten by the chief henchman of her arch nemesis. She coughed loudly to announce her presence, because their entwined biomass was firmly between her and the alcohol.

"Hi, Clarke." Emori didn't even look flustered. She was projecting that same confident and slightly intimidating air she always had, as if eating John Murphy's face in a kitchen was perfectly rational behaviour.

"I believe there are bedrooms upstairs." She informed them in a way that she hoped strongly implied she thought they ought to seek out a more appropriate venue.

"Bellamy informed me that under no circumstances were we allowed upstairs." Murphy told her surprisingly politely. "So we had to make do." He grinned, but she felt less than her usual revulsion at the gesture because she was a bit preoccupied with sorting through the fact that she had been allowed upstairs when it seemed that was not, in fact, a general thing.

"Oh. Well, sorry for interrupting. I was just trying to get a drink."

Murphy handed her a can. "There's only cider. I hope that's OK?" He asked with a little less sarcasm than was his wont.

"Yes. Of course, thank you." She found herself a little puzzled by this whole exchange, really. Was he always like this around Emori? Their relationship might make a bit more sense if that were the case. Were boys sometimes more polite around women they liked? Was that a thing? Could she infer anything about Bellamy from this new information?

As if her thoughts had summoned him, she heard steps in the corridor and turned to see him walk none too steadily into the room.

"Hello unexpected combination of my acquaintances." He tipped them an imaginary hat. "Chuck me a can, Murphy?"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" She asked softly, then wondered what on Earth had possessed her to challenge his ability to consume alcohol in front of one of his cronies.

"Why wouldn't it be, Princess?" He asked what she supposed was meant to be a rhetorical question, and between his harsh tone and the fact that he was standing an actual foot away from her rather than affectionately invading her personal space she found herself feeling a little wobbly.

She did need to practise not panicking, she reminded herself. She summoned the courage she realised would be necessary to go through with the risky idea that had just popped into her head, and took a deep breath, and met his gaze as steadily as she could.

"Excess alcohol consumption makes it all too easy for the unscrupulous to steal your phone under the guise of researching Classical architecture." It wasn't a snappy comeback, as comebacks went, and it sounded less good out loud than it had in her head. She held her breath and waited for the explosion she reckoned was coming, because she'd questioned his alcohol tolerance in front of Murphy, or let on a hint that he gave a damn about Classical architecture, or just because she'd revealed to the world that, actually, they knew each other a little too well.

The explosion never came. He kept his eyes locked on hers, and she saw his gaze soften a little as he stepped towards her and reached out to push a curl of her hair back from her face, oblivious to the other occupants of the room.

"I missed you." He offered, as if that explained anything, and she found herself even more certain in her assessment that he did not need to be drinking anything else that night.

"When?" She asked in some confusion.

"Just now. You ran off. Before I got chance to tell you about how Augustus used literature as propaganda. Also before I got chance to tell you that you're beautiful." She opened and closed her mouth an unflattering number of times in silence as she tried to wrap her head around this. If she didn't know better, she'd say he just managed to touch her heart, but she was pretty sure that was not part of the plan.

"Come on then." She settled at last on practicality. "Let's walk away from the alcohol and you can tell me all about Augustus."

"Friends." She heard Murphy mutter incredulously as she shepherded a drunk but now slightly more cheerful Bellamy out of the kitchen and back to the living room. "Friends who share a couple of classes."

"Completely platonic friends." Emori added, and she found herself feeling very slightly betrayed.

…...

"So you and Blake are on hugging terms, now, then?" Raven asked Clarke, ever to the point, as the two of them prepared for sleep that night.

"It seems so, yes." She allowed herself, for a moment, to revel in the warmth she could still feel from his goodnight hug, the ghost of his arms around her, and wonder if, perhaps, it was not so inexplicable after all that he had quite so many fans. She hadn't really been expecting a goodnight hug as well as a welcome hug, but it seemed like a fairly natural progression in the state of their relationship, all things considered. The look on his face at the end of the night had made it pretty plain that he was disinclined to let her leave at all.

"Still going to try to tell me you hate him?" Raven interrupted her thoughts with a smirk.

"Of course." She replied, displeased that her friend seemed to think this was funny. "You do remember that this is the same boy who was horrible to me for _years_?"

"Maybe he's grown up, Clarke. Maybe it's time you did too."

She didn't reply to that, because she found herself briefly distracted by the memory of an incident about two years ago, when Murphy had tripped her up in the corridor and she'd landed on her wrist funny and Bellamy had been absolutely furious at him, yelling that it _wasn't how they did things_ and _she could have been hurt_.

She resolved to ignore that thought in favour of composing a text for him to wake up to the following morning.

_Thanks for hosting fun. Hope you survive the hangover._

She frowned for a moment, allowing her friend's attempts to get a response about the hugging to wash over her, while she considered a matter of great importance.

She took a deep breath, added an _X_ , and hit send.

She woke up the following morning to a response, so clearly the _X_ couldn't have been such a mistake after all.

_Thanks for attempting to look out for me. I'm sorry if I was a bit much. X_

As things went, she thought, _a bit much_ was an interesting way of phrasing his behaviour of the night before.

_No worries. I never expected you to be a clingy drunk. I think it was sweet? X_

She was surprised to get an immediate response.

_Do you actually have any interest in Augustus' use of literature as propaganda or were you just being kind? X_

_I think you know the answer to that. X_

There followed an interesting exchange of criticism of each other's taste in books, in which she found herself more than once described as a _Philistine_. She was pretty sure that the Clarke Griffin of six weeks ago would have fainted with shock if she'd been told that Bellamy Blake even knew the word _Philistine_ , let alone that he'd be texting her about books on a Sunday morning.

She'd have been even more shocked at the disappointment this new _fun_ Clarke felt when he suddenly stopped replying around lunchtime, leaving her hanging on the accusation that he only liked reading Classical literature because it made him feel pretentious. She wondered if, perhaps, she had pushed him too far, if that trod too close to the whole _Privileged Princess vs Popular Hero_ issue. She supposed she would have to see if she could speak to him tomorrow, patch things up, make it OK.

After all, the plan would surely flounder if she left him to stew in a bad mood with her for long. And she couldn't have that.


	7. Chapter seven

Clarke, Emori and Raven were the only occupants of the common room before school on Monday morning. They were going through some Chemistry homework together when there was a commotion in the corridor that sounded suspiciously like someone punching a wall.

"What was that?" She asked, but was met only with two sets of raised eyebrows, as her friends were no better equipped to answer the question than she was.

Barely had they turned back to their task when Bellamy stormed into the room and made a beeline for his locker, head down, not acknowledging their presence. This was, she thought, something of a surprise given how warm he had been on Saturday and how cheerfully he had been texting her yesterday morning. Perhaps her hunch that she'd pushed him too far with that _pretentious_ comment had been correct. She grew only more surprised when he greeted his locker with a sturdy kick. Surely she could not have angered him that much?

"Is he OK?" Raven asked her in a frantic whisper.

"Why should I know?" She replied, growing ever more convinced that this went beyond a misjudged text. He had now progressed to punching his defenseless locker in revenge for the fact it was proving reluctant to open, oblivious to his horrified audience.

"Do you think you should go find out what's wrong?" Emori asked her in some distress.

"I don't know. Do you think I should? Do you think he would want me to?" He had, by now, managed to get his locker open and was throwing things into it with more force than coordination, leaving Raven to gasp in dismay at his apparent meltdown.

"I think you're up, Clarke." She decided. "I think he needs you."

She took a deep breath as she stood up and walked towards him. If she was going to be a doctor she was going to have to deal with more alarming things than a visibly distressed teenage boy.

"Are you OK?" She asked, not entirely happy with the way he was crouching by his open locker and she was standing over him and she couldn't even vaguely see the expression on his face.

"I'm fine." He said in tone which made it abundantly clear that he was not fine. It looked like she didn't need to be able to read his face after all.

"You don't seem fine." Silence. A large textbook slid out of the mess of his locker and he threw it robustly back onto the top of the pile. "I'm really not convinced you're fine." She continued.

"OK, then, so I'm not fine." He agreed tonelessly, while continuing to tug things out of his bag seemingly at random.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She offered tentatively.

"No." He gave her the answer she expected, but for some reason she didn't feel able to walk away.

"Are you sure?" She pressed, even though she knew full well that pestering him was unlikely to help the situation.

"You wouldn't understand, Clarke, with your fucking perfect princess life." Bag now stowed and books sorted, he kicked his locker door again for good measure. He was throwing off rather a lot of signals that he wanted to be left alone, but she'd always been a little too prone to perseverance. And, besides which, she had come to know him well enough in recent weeks that she was pretty sure he wouldn't be snapping at her like this unless he was really upset.

"Yeah, perfect apart from the bit where my dad's been dead five years." She pointed out with some asperity. "Maybe I wouldn't understand, Bellamy, but we'll never know unless you give me a chance. And if I can't understand, well, maybe I could at least provide sympathy and a listening ear?" He suddenly turned and looked at her with a rather foolish shocked expression on his face, as if he'd never had anyone suggest they could be there to listen and look after him before.

"You could?" He asked, sounding suddenly rather unlike his usual confident self.

"I could try." She confirmed. "If you'll let me."

"Our home life is complicated." He began, cautiously, and suddenly a lot of puzzle pieces she hadn't quite realised she was holding slotted together in her head. "My mum had a pretty awful day yesterday, and I just want to go and punch the guy in the face, but of course, I can't do that, and I know she's really worried and upset and I just hate knowing there's nothing I can do." He let out in a rush, eyes fixed intently on the locker in front of him, hands clenched into fists by his side. "You can't tell anyone any of this." He added suddenly in a tone of panic. "I know you're not a gossip, but I mean it. Anyone. That includes O." She reached out for the clenched fist nearest her and made a start on uncurling his fingers gently, taking deep calming breaths in the hope of encouraging him to do the same. He hadn't really told her anything, she thought, and certainly nothing worthy of repetition, and yet she knew that sharing those couple of sentences meant everything to him.

"She's so lucky, your sister, to have you protecting her all the time." She murmured softly, feeling his hand gradually relaxing beneath hers.

"My sister, my responsibility." He shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"I'm so sorry you can't do anything about the situation with your mum." She told him, reaching for his other hand now and forcing him to turn to face her. "And, of course, I can't do anything about it either, not really. But if ever you need anyone to remind you how to breathe, or to help you talk it through, or just to listen to you rant, I'll be here. And if you want to tell me more about it some time, that's fine. And if you don't, or can't, that's fine too. And, of course, I'm never going to tell another soul that this conversation ever happened." His hands were shaking a bit now, the anger draining out of him, and she was a little worried he might crumple into a heap at her feet. Instead, it seemed, he decided to collapse onto her, and he engulfed her in a slightly desperate hug that almost sent her staggering backwards.

"Thanks, Princess." She felt more than heard him whisper it into her hair.

"Any time." She whispered back, squeezing him tightly. Eventually, he took a deep breath and pulled away, just far enough to leave the circle of her arms, but such that he was still less than a pace away from her.

"I think I might go for an aimless walk around the pitches, clear my head a bit." He told her, not quite meeting her eyes. He was, at least, not kicking anything, and she decided that would have to be good enough. "Thanks for, you know, being you. And... I'm sorry, for being so short with you just now. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"I forgive you." She smiled gently up at him, hoping he would forgive himself. She forgot, in that moment, that he was supposed to be beyond her forgiveness, that she was supposed to be hell-bent on vengeance. She seemed to have been forgetting that a lot lately.

"I'll see you later." He said now, and made his way towards the door.

"Take care." She said, and surprised herself a little by how deeply and genuinely she meant it. She surprised herself rather more with the relief she felt on seeing him walk into their Chemistry lesson first period, in one piece and no longer showing any interest in kicking things. The biggest surprise of the day, however, was how utterly it made her morning to see him throw her a strained but genuine smile across the room.

…...

There was, she thought, a lot she wasn't telling Raven and Emori about how things stood with Bellamy. The two of them seemed very interested in her life, and she understood that this was a sign of friendship, but she wasn't quite sure how to handle it. Apart from anything else, there were good-sized chunks of their relationship that didn't seem to be hers to share. He'd made it quite clear that no one was to know the content of their conversation of yesterday morning, and she'd stuck to that however many times her friends asked about the hug, but she couldn't help feeling he wouldn't particularly want them to know about his insecurity on Saturday evening, either, nor about his weekly library habit. And, really, that meant that all the three of them had to discuss was a handful of texts – whose contents she wasn't keen to share either, now she thought about it – and the ongoing grinning-across-classrooms situation.

"What do you two even talk about?" Raven asked her on the way to Chemistry last thing that afternoon. "Is it all foolish lovestruck smiles and chemistry puns?"

"Also Roman emperors, it seems." Emori informed her, with a smirk at Clarke. "I witnessed a fascinating but rather odd conversation on Saturday."

"Rugby, sometimes." Clarke told them, thinking this seemed harmless enough to share. "That's quite a recent development, and one I'm not entirely comfortable with considering I don't understand the game."

"You don't need to understand it." Emori reassured her. "When John starts talking about rugby I just nod and smile and tell him he's doing great. And you've already got the smiling down, and you seem to be pretty good at making him feel like he's doing great, so you only need to work on your nodding game."

"I always wondered how, exactly, you and John worked." It felt strange to call him John, but it seemed only polite when Emori insisted on doing so. "I suppose now I know at least some of your secrets."

Her friend shrugged. "He thinks I'm hot, which I appreciate given the whole weird hand thing." She waved with the hand she was so self-conscious of. Clarke didn't really understand why it worried her so much, but she had picked up from various fragments that she'd been bullied for it in the past and that was part of the reason she had moved schools. "I think he's hot, which he appreciates given the whole living in Bellamy's shadow thing. He's pretty supportive of me being a bit of an odd fish, and I try to pick him up when his home life is falling apart." Clarke repressed the quiet voice that was telling her that this was beginning to sound a little like her and Bellamy in parts. "And it didn't hurt that I got lost on the first day and he showed me the way to Physics." She finished with a slightly dreamy smile that was somewhat out of place on her usually businesslike face.

"I'm surprised he even knew the way to Physics." Raven jibed, and Clarke couldn't help laughing.

"He's not an idiot, Raven." Emori snapped in return. "I'm sick of him being the butt of everyone's jokes."

"I'm sorry." Raven offered quietly, and Clarke found herself wondering what magic Emori had worked to make her usually abrasive friend so open to correction. They entered the lab and found the teacher instructing them to split into pairs.

"We can be a three, right, Mr Pike?" Raven rushed to ask, and Clarke was grateful that she hadn't immediately grabbed Emori by the arm and left her to fend for herself. She didn't like to indulge in insecurity, but she wasn't sure she'd like it if the girl who'd been her closest companion at school for some time now had suddenly found a replacement for her.

"I said pairs, I believe." He repeated without sympathy.

"But you let us work as a three last week." Emori pointed out, because, in fact, he had, but Clarke found herself temporarily distracted from the debate by Bellamy walking into the room and shooting a dazzling smile in her direction. Dazzling? Since when did she find his smiles _dazzling_?

"Aha, Miss Sands. If you remember, we had an odd number last week. And yet, today, Mr Stirling is ill, so we have an even number, and I would like you, please, to split into pairs." His stern instruction was rather undermined, she thought, by the way Bellamy was rolling his eyes behind him. "As it happens, it's a very straightforward practical, virtually identical to the one you did last week, so it should present no problems."

"But we can't -" Raven began, but Clarke cut her off.

"It's fine, Raven. You two pair up." She gathered her courage, and prayed to any deity who might care about her petty concerns that she was not about to make the most embarrassing misjudgment of her young life. "I can work with Bellamy."

In the silence that fell around her, as the entire class held their breaths and waited to see whether anything gossip-worthy would be forthcoming, her heartbeat sounded rather ominously in her ears. It was, she thought, a bit of a jump from him wanting to hug her in front of two of her closest friends in an otherwise deserted common room in a moment of weakness to him being willing to admit they were on speaking terms in front of an entire class of their peers.

To her infinite relief, it was a very short silence.

"Sounds like a plan, Princess." He grinned openly and sauntered over to the bench she normally sat at with her friends, dumping his books at the end next to her place.

"Thanks for not making a big deal out of it." She said quietly, as she took her seat and started pretending to read the instructions for the practical.

"Thanks for wanting to work with me." He responded with an easy smile. "I figure you have to be a better lab partner than Stirling. He never has a clue what's going on."

"Well this shouldn't be too bad, right? Pike said it was like last week's."

"I'm not sure that will help us, Princess. I seem to remember I spent most of that lesson coming up with a pun and then plotting ways to pass it to you."

"And I seem to remember I spent quite a lot of that lesson distracted by that pun." She admitted. "So perhaps, you could keep quiet and let me read?" She indicated the instruction sheet.

"Your wish is my command, Princess." He decided, to her surprise, to entertain himself instead by leaning round her and striking up a conversation with Raven and Emori. She wasn't sure she'd ever really seen him interact with either of them before, but with his customary easy charm he had them both laughing at something he'd said before she had even finished reading the list of required apparatus. Admittedly, she reckoned that was partly because the distressingly warm sound of his voice wasn't exactly helping the fluency of her reading.

"You wound me, Reyes." He was saying now, no doubt in response to some witticism that she'd missed, and she found herself just a little displeased that he was apparently joking with Raven as easily as he did with her. She'd thought she was special, or at least that something about her having permission to tease him was. Maybe there had been something special about the screwing and leaving he'd done with Raven, too, a little voice inside her head suggested. And obviously she wasn't jealous at the idea, no, not at all. She was just finding it really rather rude that he was carrying on like that when they had an experiment to do.

"Bellamy. A little help?" She interrupted his cheerful conversation perhaps more sharply than was entirely necessary and indicated the piece of paper in front of her.

"Sure. Sorry." He shuffled closer to share the instruction sheet with her, his thigh pressing against hers, his dark hair distractingly nearby, and she found herself rendered even more incapable of coherent thought than she had been a couple of minutes ago. "Do you get this?" He asked after a couple of minutes, interrupting her daydreams about what it might feel like to run her fingers through his curls, and turned to look at her with eyebrows raised.

"Still working on it." She muttered, and returned her concentration to the instructions through sheer force of will.

"We can always ask Raven?" He suggested, indicating the fact that her friends were already well underway with setting up their equipment.

"We don't need to _ask Raven_." She bit back, rather offended that he thought she wasn't good enough to do some stupid practical. "I'm perfectly capable of working this out. If you want to go flirt with Raven in the meantime, you're entirely welcome. I won't stand in the way of your fun." She didn't remember planning to say any of that, but it seemed to have happened anyway.

"Hey, Clarke, relax. I know you can work it out. I just thought it might be easier to take a short cut and ask for a bit of help."

"I don't want to take a short cut." She told him stubbornly. "If I'm going to get into medicine I'm going to need to be able to pass chemistry for myself. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get on with this." She stood up and stormed away in the direction of the burettes. Other people seemed to have burettes, so it appeared to be a logical first step. She took her time, and took many deep breaths, and reminded herself that she wasn't jealous, not at all, because being _jealous_ would imply that she actually cared. She was just worried, she told herself, that all this effort she was putting into the plan, all of these distractions, might be endangering her grades.

By the time she returned to their desk, he had a beaker of some colourless liquid in front of him and a contrite expression on his face as he made a point of studying the rest of the instructions.

"I'm sorry." He offered simply. "Let's get on with this. I'm sure the two of us could make a pretty awesome team if we work together."

"Yeah." She agreed with a half smile and got to work on setting up the burette. They worked in companionable silence for a moment before he surprised her.

"You don't need to worry about Raven." He told her quietly, and she hoped she wasn't getting carried away in thinking he meant what she thought he meant. "You know that, right?"

"I guess I do now." She grinned and attempted to inject a bit of levity into the conversation. He cheerfully changed the subject to what, exactly, step seven meant, and then they engaged in a mock dispute about who was on water duty, and when he returned from the tap he professed himself disappointed that she hadn't passed him a pun on his travels. And, somehow, during the course of all this, they also managed to get on with the task at hand rather successfully.

"Looks like you were right." She acknowledged as the lesson drew to a close.

"About what, exactly?" He asked with evident confusion.

"We do make a pretty great team." She indicated the pleasing results before them.

"Knew we would." He grinned at her, and nudged her leg with his knee under the desk. "Lab partners for life?" He asked with something of a puppy dog expression, she thought.

"That seems a bit of a big promise." She replied with a laugh. "Lab partners for now?"

"Lab partners for the foreseeable future?" He compromised, and she laughed.

"It's a deal." When she looked back on that conversation on her walk to chess club she cursed her own stupidity. Nowhere in the guidelines for _Operation: Lunch Revenge_ had there been a step that consisted of gaining a new lab partner, of this she was pretty sure. And she was absolutely certain that there had been no mention at all of gaining a new _friend_. After all, it seemed like a fairly obvious leap of logic that arch-nemeses did not make great friends. But then again, it seemed like logic had largely flown out of the window the moment the real Bellamy Blake had shown up in her life.

…...

She wasn't entirely sure what the point of having a meeting of the editorial committee of the school biology journal for several hours after school on a Wednesday was, because all this was really code for was her and Jasper and Monty sitting around bemoaning the fact that no one was interested in writing for the school biology journal and then arguing about how best to convince people to contribute more readily to the school biology journal.

She was heartily sick of the damn school biology journal.

She breathed deeply and reminded herself that this would look good when she applied for university, and also that Jasper and Monty were her friends, and also that there were, really, more important things in the world. All the same, she was tired and hungry and thoroughly grumpy by the time she made it back to the common room to grab her things from her locker and head home. As she stomped through the door she saw Bellamy lounging on one of the sofas in his rugby kit, in the midst of some light reading about the peasants' revolt and eating an apple, and her mood brightened somewhat but she didn't allow herself to overanalyse why that might be the case.

"Long day, Princess?" He asked, setting his book aside.

"Just a stupid biology journal meeting. What is the point of having an editorial committee when there is nothing to edit? Complete waste of everyone's time. And now I'm tired, and hungry, and stressed out about all the work I still have to do tonight. And also ranting at you. Sorry." She offered him an apologetic smile.

"It's OK. I can't help with the biology journal, but you're welcome to half an apple?" He held up the fruit in question, from which he had already taken several bites, and she found herself shivering slightly at the careless intimacy of the suggestion.

"No, that's OK." She decided, not quite feeling brave enough to take him up on his offer. "I think you need it more, having apparently done actual exercise."

"I would offer a hug instead, but I'm a bit muddy." He gestured apologetically at his state of dress.

"To be honest, I would actually really appreciate a slightly muddy hug right about now." She admitted in a moment of weakness, and almost before she'd finished speaking he jumped to his feet and engulfed her in his arms. It seemed that wholehearted hugs were the only kind of hugs he was capable of. They stood there for a moment, and she found herself rather soothed by the comfort of his warm body wrapped around hers, but eventually she decided she had better pull away.

"Thanks. Best slightly muddy hug I've had all day." She slowly set about assembling her belongings and packing her bag. "It's a good job I really really want to be a doctor." She said tiredly, and she didn't need to explain what she meant because he was already right there.

"It'll be worth it." He assured her. "All of this being stressed and exhausted will be so worth it when you finally get to do the thing you've always dreamed of."

"That's what I'm counting on." She agreed tiredly. "Why are you still here, anyway? Not that it wasn't a nice surprise, of course."

"O has netball training. And based on the amount of time I've been sitting here, she then has chatting to her friends in the changing rooms for literally hours."

"I've only met her once, but that does seem like something she would do."

"Are you heading out? I'm coming with you. And telling her to hurry the hell up." He pulled his phone out his pocket and sent his sister a message while she finished packing her bag.

"So how's the book?" She asked as he stuffed it back into his bag, keen to get on with some cheerful book chat that might lift her mood.

"Revolting."

"Wow. Worst pun ever. Even worse than that whole sodium hydroxide being basic thing."

"Sorry. But it actually is also really bad. So dry. You have no idea how pleased I was when you walked into the room and gave me an excuse to stop pretending to read it."

"Glad to be of service." She smiled at him, and he smiled at her, and the two of them sort of stood there looking a bit foolish for a while until he cleared his throat and gestured to the door.

"Shall we?" He asked, and they started making their way out of the building together. "Can I take a bag?"

"I can carry my own bags, Blake." She informed him sharply.

"I know you _can_ carry it, but I thought it might be nice if I did." He was looking at her so earnestly, and really, she was quite tired, and she was carrying quite a lot, so she gave up at least in part and passed over a cloth bag of books that didn't fit in her backpack. That bag was, she thought, evidence if any were needed that she had rather too much to do tonight.

"How was training?" She asked, trying to appear interested but very much hoping that he did not give some overly complicated answer she wouldn't understand.

"Muddy." He pointed out with a smirk. "Also really good, actually. Rather more successful than that tournament on Saturday. I'm beginning to think we're just hopeless at playing in the rain, which is unfortunate given this is, in fact, the North. Coach had us try a new set up, Miller and Mbege have swapped positions, and it looks like that will work really well, and the whole team just feels more solid, you know? And - and I've just seen the look on your face and you couldn't care less." He finished, sounding surprisingly upbeat about the situation.

"Sorry. I do care." She rushed to assure him, trying belatedly to paste an expression of deep interest and genuine enthusiasm onto her face. "Or at least, I care in as much as it affects you. And Emori told me it didn't matter if I didn't understand as long as I nodded and smiled and told you you're doing great."

"So that's her secret." He mused aloud. "I did wonder. Thank you, anyway. It's kind of you to try to care on my behalf."

"Any time." She smiled up at him, and they were doing that thing where the silence was growing and they were both grinning awkwardly at each other and she was wondering whether he might perhaps be considering kissing her as much as she was considering kissing him when Octavia interrupted by bounding towards them.

"Clarke!" She exclaimed, completely ignoring her brother as she rushed to pull her into a hug. Clearly, she inspired excessive amounts of hugging in both Blake siblings.

"Octavia. Hi. How was netball?"

"Fine, fine. What have you two been up to?" She acknowledged her brother's presence now with wide eyes and a look that contained more inquisitiveness than Clarke thought could possibly bode well.

"Walking, O." Bellamy said with careful emphasis. "Also talking. For a grand total of, I think, five minutes."

"To be fair, I think it might be about seven minutes by now." Clarke corrected him with a grin.

"Not helping." He hissed at her with an expression of mock annoyance as his sister took in their exchange with unconcealed delight. "Come on, O, we should get going. Mum's making spaghetti." He offered by way of bribe.

"But I want to stay and talk to Clarke." She whined with a pout.

"I'm afraid Clarke has to go home and do quite a lot of work." He explained gently. "You can annoy her another day."

"Promise?" The girl was asking her now.

"Promise." She confirmed. "Bellamy's right. I should be going." She reached out to take her bag back from him and was caught unawares when he caught and held her hand for a moment.

"Look after yourself, Princess." He whispered, so quietly that she had to strain to hear him and rather as though he was trying to avoid being overheard by his sister. "Try not to work too hard."

"Thanks. I'll try." She felt him squeeze her hand once, then he handed over her bag and started shepherding his sister away from school, leaving her standing there for just a moment, blinking stupidly at his retreating back and trying to convince herself that her eyes were not wet. After all, that would be a sign that she cared, she reckoned, a sign that she was in some way _moved_ by his obvious desire to look out for her. And that couldn't be right. That couldn't be right at all. She was supposed to be making him fall for her, not allowing herself to get attached to him.

She trudged to the car, laden down with belongings and rather grateful that Bellamy had carried some of them at least part way. Her mother greeted her with a generous dose of false cheer and asked after the biology journal. Clarke gave a few robotic answers by way of reply, but found her thoughts were still stuck on a pair of warm dark eyes and a matching pair of warm muddy arms. They kept up a valiant attempt at discussing her schoolwork over supper, and then she escaped to her room and set about being thoroughly miserable and overworked.

It was later than she cared to admit and she was half way through her final task, an essay for Art History about the Dutch Golden Age, when she heard her phone buzz. She forced herself to finish her paragraph before she let her trademark curiosity win out.

_Hope you're surviving. X_

She gave a hollow laugh, because really, being stressed about school and the future was, she realised, nothing compared to whatever he was so worried about at home with his mum, yet still he managed to find the compassion to look out for her like this. She briefly considered asking him to explain to her some of the aspects of the Classical myths portrayed by van Loo that were rather eluding her, but she soon came to the conclusion that doing so would take up a disproportionate amount of both of their time. Tonight was, she told herself, an occasion where producing work that was good enough would, in fact, have to be good enough.

_Just about. Not too much left to do now. You should get some sleep. X_

_You should try that eventually too. I hear sleep is good for you. Night xx_


	8. Chapter eight

Bellamy was waiting by her locker when school ended the next day, bag slung over his shoulder, a careless smirk slung across his face.

"Can I help you?" She asked, not even trying to hide the broad smile that broke out across her face at the sight of him standing there, looking for all the world as if he had actually made a deliberate attempt to wait for her.

"We have plans." He told her, his tone suggesting this was something she ought to know.

"I don't remember us making plans." She made a point of pretending to rack her brains for the memory.

"I didn't say we _made_ plans." He clarified. "I said we _had_ plans."

"Well that explains everything." She said, making it quite clear that it explained nothing.

"You had a bad day yesterday, I figured you deserved a cheerful excursion to the library in my delightful company." He explained. "Unless you still have loads of work to do? I didn't think of that. Are you still having a work crisis?" He looked disproportionately upset at the idea, she thought.

"No, I'm all good. Only a little bit more work to do when I get in." She reassured him with a smile. "Library it is." Bags packed, she indicated the direction of the door.

"Can I take your books?"

"I'm not even going to argue this time." She handed them over gratefully.

"It seems like you did know we had plans." He teased her gleefully, peeking into the bag and seeing that she had brought her library books into school again.

"Maybe I just wanted to go to the library alone."

"That doesn't sound right." He argued. "Going to the library with me is your favourite activity."

"The sad thing is, you might actually be right about that."

"I'm honoured." He responded. "Princess Griffin admitting that she relishes the pleasure of my company." She felt her joyful mood hiccup slightly at that, although she wasn't sure how to go about articulating why.

"Are you sure about walking me out of school like this?" She asked him in the end. "People will see you hanging out with me."

"Good for people." He shrugged. "I want to go to the library with you."

Deciding that was probably the closest to a decent answer she was going to get, she moved the conversation along to whether or not the peasants' revolt had improved since yesterday, and he lamented that it had not, and admitted that, in fact, he was intending to return the book anyway in spite of the fact that it remained unfinished, and she teased him about this terrible failure while he defended himself passionately against her accusations until they found themselves standing before the library doors.

"Shh." He hushed her laughter by pressing a finger to her lips, and she momentarily forgot how to breathe. "This is a library, Clarke. You can't laugh in a library." Satisfied that she had been rendered speechless, he pulled away, and she stared stupidly at him for a moment before responding.

"You did not just use the library against me." She shook her head at him. "Wow. Proof that I won. Now come on." Emboldened by the whole finger-on-lips thing, she reached out for his hand and tugged him towards the doors. She was surprised to find that, once she had made her point, he did not let go, but simply threaded his fingers through hers as they stood in the queue at the front desk. Eventually, to her substantial disappointment, she had to release his hand so they could both return their books, but she didn't have to live with her disappointment for long as he immediately reclaimed her hand to drag her towards the history shelves. It was a challenging situation, she thought, having a lovely time in a library with a good-looking boy she was hoping to convince to enter a relationship with her. Because the thing about a library visit, at least the way they'd done library visits so far, was that it had a rather fixed end point at the moment where they checked out their new books, and that there weren't a whole lot of opportunities for romantic loitering beyond that without making it obvious to him that she was up to something. She found herself therefore dragging her feet as much as possible over making decisions about the books he recommended, taking her time to read the blurb and the reviews and, even, when she felt like pushing her luck, the entire first page before making her selections. Knowing that she had far too much to do, she normally limited herself to two or perhaps three books a week, but on this occasion once she had selected a third she insisted that he simply had to help her choose a fourth, and by way of response he bounded with cheerful puppy-like enthusiasm towards Greek theatre and she made a great show of deliberating slowly over half a dozen different options. To his credit, he never once gave any sign of either impatience or suspicion. On the contrary, every time she looked up from her long drawn-out perusals he was watching her with a soft smile on his face, and a look in his eyes that made her feel a little overheated in spite of the grey day outside.

When she found that she could string her selection process out no longer without making herself ridiculous, she dragged him towards the historical fiction section and handed him a book decisively. She realised _decisiveness_ wasn't going to help her in her mission to make this afternoon last forever, but she hoped that her book recommendation expertise might at least count in her favour in this audition for the role of girlfriend.

" _Pompeii_?" He asked with a frown. "I think Pompeii is a bit overdone, personally."

"It's by that same author who wrote that trilogy about Cicero." She pointed out to him.

"Fair point." He agreed, and tucked it under his arm. "Is it as good as they were?"

"No idea." She admitted with a laugh. "I've never read it. Let me know whether I should."

"Do you understand how recommending a book works, Clarke?" He asked her with a chuckle.

"Patronising." She accused him. "Come on, you need to borrow something about van Loos so you understand what the hell I'm on about the next time I need to have a moan about him."

With that, they moved on to Art History, and she didn't think she was entirely imagining that he, too, seemed to be deliberating over his choices at rather greater length than usual today, lingering over this biography or that of exactly the same artist until she got the giggles and suggested he would just have to take both. Just when they were finally walking towards the front desk and she thought that the inevitable end of their _plans_ could be postponed no longer, he insisted on going on a detour to the kids' section, of all places, and there he handed her a particular children's book with rather an impressive smirk on his face.

"What is this?" She asked in some perplexity.

"This is an illustrated guide to team sports." He told her what she had already read on the cover.

"Yes. And why, exactly, do you want me to borrow it?"

"I thought it might help you to understand next time I moan about rugby."

"There's going to be a next time, then?" She asked evenly, trying not to let on how much she was wondering what the future held for them.

"I hope so."

"Good." He was looking at her a bit funny, she thought, but she didn't quite feel brave enough to analyse why. "I suppose we should probably go. Get these checked out. Get on with our lives." She sighed at the thought.

"You said you didn't have much to do tonight, yes?" He asked, and when she looked up at the change of tone in his voice she found that he had become inexplicably fascinated by the brightly coloured swirling pattern on the carpet that adorned this particular area of the kids' section.

"Yes?" She confirmed, the question in her voice asking where exactly this was going.

"Well I heard recently that your favourite food was ice cream." He said, picking out a blue curve with the toe of his shoe. "And it turns out there's a place just round the corner from here that has fifteen different types of sundae." She felt a smile grow on her face, quite without her permission, as her heart started racing at the thought that this might, in fact, be going where she was hoping it would. "Can I take you out for ice cream, Princess?"

"Yes." She replied firmly. "You can definitely take me out for ice cream."

They checked their books out rather swiftly after that, and she liked to think that she wasn't the only one who was feeling rather giddy at the prospect of their impending date. This _was_ a date, she thought, she was almost sure of it, but she reminded herself that she had better take care until he actually used the word himself. The walk to the place he had suggested was mercifully short, because happiness appeared to have taken away her ability to make intelligent conversation and left her capable only of giggling pathetically at almost everything he said.

"So how does this work?" She asked, once they found themselves sitting on somewhat uncomfortable high stools at a sort of bar and looking at the menu. It was, she thought, a surprising choice of furniture for a vendor of ice cream, but between the way that Bellamy was sitting really rather close to her and, to be honest, the fact that he'd invited her here at all, she was disinclined to complain. "Do we go order at the counter or does someone come over here?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I've never been here before."

"If you've never been here before, how did you know they had fifteen types of sundae?" She wondered out loud.

"I did my research." He smirked at her, and she realised that, in fact, this was a rather _premeditated_ sort of an ice cream date. He had put actual thought into finding this place that was near the library and she would like, and her heart melted a little at the realisation.

"You've been planning this." She accused him in a playful tone.

"The universe has been planning this." He shot back at her. "Why else put fifteen different types of sundae so near to the library?"

If he kept talking like that, people were going to start to realise he had a romantic side, she thought.

"Thanks for suggesting this." She said, because she decided that was probably the closest she was willing to get to admitting what was going through her mind.

"You're very welcome." He dropped his menu decisively back onto the table-bar-furniture in front of them. "I've chosen. What am I getting you? I think it seems to be a go order and pay at the counter sort of place." He gestured at a young man doing that very thing, and she panicked somewhat at the thought of how to phrase what she was currently thinking. She really did need to work on this panicking thing, she resolved.

"You don't have to get me anything, Bellamy. I'm not trying to be insensitive but – I don't expect you to pay." She prayed that, being a rather intelligent sort of a guy, he would be able to work out what she meant by that.

"I want to." He stated firmly. "We may not be made of money, but I can afford to buy you the occasional ice cream, Clarke." He went on in a rather quieter tone, not quite meeting her eye. "And anyway, I believe modern etiquette decrees that the person who asks for the date pays for the date."

She felt herself flush with happiness at that sentence, all the confirmation she had been looking for that a date was indeed what this was, and decided that she could let him win this round. "In that case, I'll have strawberry and cookie dough, please. And I'll also make a point of being the one doing the asking next time." She told the menu in front of her, but she was pretty sure she could _feel_ the smile that broke out across his face at her words all the same.

"I look forward to it." He told her, and went to order their ice creams, leaving her to play nervously with the menu in front of her until his return. It was looking distinctly the worse for wear around the corners by the time he returned and stilled her hands by taking them in his own.

"You can stop torturing the poor menu now." He urged her, and she put it down without argument. "So when I looked this place up, I did find myself wondering who on Earth would want a strawberry and cookie dough sundae."

"It sounds like a pretty great combination to me."

"I think we've already discovered that you have terrible taste in a wide range of fields."

"Decent taste in dates, though."

"I chose this, you can't claim it."

"I meant the person, you idiot. Not the place. It was a compliment, I'll have you know."

"Wow. You might want to work on those, Princess." Their exchange was interrupted by the arrival of their ice creams, and she looked with horror at the chocolate-coloured mess that was set before him.

"What on earth is _that_?" She asked.

"Chocolate brownie ice cream, nutella ice cream, chocolate chip ice cream, chocolate sauce, and chocolate flake." He picked up his spoon with even more enthusiasm than she was used to seeing him employ when picking up books. "Do you want some?" He offered, holding out a spoonful towards her, and she accepted because it seemed like the kind of thing she was supposed to do on a date.

"That is too much chocolate." She pronounced, turning to her strawberry and cookie dough.

"Not possible." He stated vehemently. "I think that's another example of terrible taste, Princess."

"Do you want to try mine?" She did the holding out the spoon thing, and he tasted the ice cream and then looked at her with a considering sort of expression.

"Actually surprisingly OK." He declared. "Confusing, but not unpleasant."

"I like it." She announced, and got to work. Dates with thoughtful and entertaining boys who also happened to be seriously hot were all very well, but her ice cream needed her attention. The silence perhaps grew a little too long. She wasn't sure whether he, too, was as dedicated to ice cream as she was, or whether he was feeling awkward about making suitable date chit chat. Based on the ease with which they normally took the piss out of each other, and the enthusiasm with which he was eating his chocolate sludge, she decided it was probably the former.

"So have you got any plans for this weekend?" He asked at length. "Do you maybe want to come over and watch some TV or something? I figure my sister and mother are less likely to object to the idea of us dating than your mother, who probably doesn't see dating me as useful to project med school -"

"Bellamy." She interrupted, suddenly overcome by confusion at the change in their situation. "How is this going to work?" She supposed that questioning her current happiness was unlikely to enhance it, but she couldn't help feeling that there were a few things they needed to clarify.

"Well, I was sort of hoping we'd eat ice cream sometimes and hang out sometimes and maybe eventually, you know, other things might happen." He looked down at his ice cream in visible discomfort, and she suppressed a shiver at the pleasurable thought of those _other things_ he might be referring to.

"That's not what I meant. You've hated me for at least a decade, and all your friends hate me, and we only started kind of getting on, what, a month ago?" She allowed her concerns and insecurities to spill out of her. Because, surely, she was not supposed to end up with Bellamy Blake sitting there gazing at her as if she were something precious?

"I don't think hate is the right word. I was jealous of you, and threatened by you, sure. And there was a pretty big dose of the whole boys-being-mean-to-girls-they-quite-like thing." He admitted without meeting her eye. "I'm sorry for perpetuating that stereotype, because ninety percent of the time I'm pretty sure the boy is actually just an arse. I was definitely often an arse, for which I can only apologise." He offered with something that sounded suspiciously close to emotion. "But then I got to know you beyond the obvious facts of you being funny and clever and - I'm sorry for being shallow but it's true – hot, and realised you're actually also caring and companionable and _fun_ , and, well, I'd quite like us to give it a go, at least. I mean, we can start with ice cream and hanging out and see where we end up. If, you know, if you want to, of course."

By way of answer, she kissed him, and he seemed to get the idea and proceeded to kiss her back quite enthusiastically, cradling the back of her head in his hand even as she ran her fingers through his hair, and their ice cream was left to melt for a good few minutes. For the first time in her life she found that she didn't care about ice cream at all, really, because his lips were warm and soft and he tasted like chocolate and at least a little bit like happiness. And, sure, they hadn't exactly practised this, and it was somewhat damp in places, and she wasn't really accustomed to quite such insistent use of _tongue_ but she decided that it would probably grow on her, all things considered. After all, if it was a feature of kissing Bellamy, she was pretty sure she'd be willing to persevere with it. She was pretty sure that the warmth pooling in her belly - and, she had to admit, also a little lower - would _insist_ on her persevering with it.

Eventually, she pulled back for air, and found herself staring awkwardly at the sad remains of her sundae and wondering quite what had possessed her to engage in what she could only describe as _snogging_ in an ice cream shop.

"That was a yes, in case you weren't sure." She informed her melted ice cream.

"I was hoping so." He sounded at least as dazed as she felt, she thought, and she found herself rather reassured by the realisation. She shuffled a bit closer to him, reluctant to leave any air between them now that she knew the extent to which physical contact with Bellamy made the world a better place. Again, he seemed to catch on quickly and put a hand on her knee as they finished their rather melted sundaes.

"I don't think we need to worry about what everyone will think or say, Clarke." He tried to reassure her. "One of the advantages of being an insufferable alpha male is that my friends basically have to think everything I do is a good idea."

She laughed at that and pecked him on the cheek, relishing the feel of his soft skin beneath her lips. She could get used to this, she thought. It took them rather a long time to finish their sundaes, between the challenge of eating melted ice cream neatly and the absolute necessity of stopping for frequent kisses, but eventually she felt she ought to call it a day before her mother started growing suspicious. The snogging session on the pavement outside before they went their separate ways was even better than the first one, she decided, in spite of the drizzle that was beginning to fall. There was something about the lack of curious ice cream eaters forming an audience that made the whole thing more relaxed, and she was already getting used to the particularly _Bellamy_ way that he kissed. The best bit of all, though, was the options that standing up presented for him to hold her tight, pressed firmly up against him, and the opportunities for her hands to make a start on exploring the beautiful muscles of his back and shoulders while he showed a gratifying interest in the curves of her bum. All in all, by the time they said goodbye, she rather felt that their afternoon together must have set a standard for first dates that would be unsurpassed by all other couples for the rest of time.

As she walked home she realised with a sense of dread that she hadn't thought of the plan for at least an hour. She was in serious trouble.

…...

The sense of dread didn't last very long, all things considered. Whether it was for the plan's sake or her own she didn't really hang around to consider, but by the time she walked through her front door she was smiling from ear to ear again.

"You seem happy." Her mother commented with admirable perceptiveness. "Enjoy the library?"

"Yeah." She admitted, wondering how much to tell.

"That's good." She replied. "I'm pleased you ditched that Maths clinic, Clarke. You didn't need to go, it was just draining your time and you seem to be enjoying the library much more on a Thursday."

"Yeah, it's pretty great. I've been making a few more friends recently too." She decided that white lie was a fair part of why she'd been so goddamn perky all the time, without containing anything her mother was likely to object to.

"That's great, darling. I'm happy for you. What are they like, these new friends?" Clarke giggled a little internally and wondered where to begin.

"One of them wants to design planes when she's older and goes to model plane club." That seemed a good place to start. Phrased like that Emori was thoroughly unobjectionable as company for a prospective medical student. "Another one wants to build rockets. She's the one I've mostly been staying over with recently. And then there's these two who have some grand scheme to set up a business together to revolutionise the world of sustainable agriculture." That was all very admirable, she hoped. She tried not to allow herself to pause while she wondered how on Earth to go about explaining Bellamy to her mother. "And another one who likes reading and is really into history."

"History? That seems a bit different from the rest of the group."

"Uhuh."

"Well, as long as you're all happy, I suppose."

Deep and meaningful parental chat duties apparently dispensed with for the evening, her mother set about making chicken while Clarke chopped some salad ingredients. One of the disadvantages, it seemed, of keeping late afternoon ice cream dates a secret was that one was forced to pretend to be hungry for supper. When the meal was ready she took a small serving, ate it quickly, put her plate in the dishwasher, and ran upstairs to her room to reply to the text she'd heard arrive, hoping with a giddy sense of anticipation that it might be from Bellamy.

_I made the tactical error of telling O the truth of why I was home late. I left out certain details, but she's still bouncing off the walls. Want to come over on Saturday afternoon while she's out so you don't have to face her? Xxx_

_She's adorable. I think. Saturday afternoon sounds perfect._

She considered her next words carefully, because she didn't want to sound clingy or desperate or anything, but she did also want to be honest with him.

_Thanks for this afternoon. I had a great time with you. Xxx_

It wasn't until after she'd pressed send that she remembered that _honesty_ wasn't really a feature of this relationship, built as it was on her desire for revenge and a plan that she was beginning to realise had been made before she had all the necessary information at her disposal. Necessary information such as the fact that he was capable of being incredibly kind, or the fact that kissing him felt rather like flying. And, sure, she'd been very angry about that lunch for a very long time, but that seemed to pale into insignificance next to the muddy hug he'd offered when she was stressed out about her future. She mentally shook herself. No one said she had to go through with the plan _now_ , she reminded herself. In fact, it would probably work better if they dated for a while and he got invested in their relationship before she broke it off.

Who was she kidding? It would probably work better if they dated for a while. And then didn't ever _stop_ dating.


	9. Chapter 9

Clarke awoke the following morning somewhat more in control of her thoughts. Some distance from the whole adorable-sundae-date-thing had helped her to recover her sense of perspective. No matter what Bellamy might be telling himself – and her - and however contrite he might appear, she was pretty sure no amount of ice cream could make up for an entire decade of him being an absolute arse to her. Resolve strengthened, she got herself ready for school. She found herself arriving in the car park rather later than she had hoped. She was still well ahead of time regarding actual lessons, but she had had a vague intention to arrive early enough to get a feel for the lie of the land regarding where she now stood with Bellamy. Was he going to be openly acknowledging the whole _dating_ thing in front of other people? Was she supposed to be some dirty secret? Or was the answer somewhere between the two, with some complicated code she had yet to understand when it came to what he did or did not want all his friends to know? After all, the plan could yet hinge on her ability to play this game to his satisfaction.

It turned out she needn't have worried. No sooner had she walked into the crowded common room than he bounded to his feet and made straight for her, greeting her with a rather beautiful kiss on the lips. It was a shame, she supposed, that a crowded school common room wasn't particularly the place for extended make out sessions, because they were already showing signs of having the potential to be quite good at those, but she reckoned this new way of saying good morning was more than pleasant enough to be getting on with. He followed her like a particularly dedicated labrador as she went to her locker and organised her belongings for the day, and then they made their way together over to the sofa he had been occupying when she first arrived. She wasn't quite sure what she made of this idea, as sitting with Miller and Mbege and Stirling and Murphy was not necessarily her idea of fun, but with Bellamy by her side she thought she could probably achieve anything.

By which, of course, she in fact meant that she was willing to go through with a little minor discomfort for the sake of her _revenge_. Clearly she was just experiencing a little difficulty in arranging her thoughts this morning.

Anyway, Emori was there too, so she'd have at least one friendly face, and she reckoned it was a pretty sure thing that Raven would therefore be showing up before too long. The settled into their spaces, and Bellamy reached an arm around her, making absolutely no attempt to hide it. This, she thought, was surely the moment where someone would say something. Mbege was not an intelligent bloke, so perhaps he would say something dense and obnoxious, or perhaps Miller would think of a slightly more sensitive way to bring up the subject.

She was wrong. No one said anything at all. Well, not about their new seating arrangements and interpersonal interactions, anyway. Plenty was said about rugby.

"We'll smash them tomorrow." Mbege contributed, in his typically insightful way, and she found herself deciding that one of her girlfriendly duties was probably to know who the hell _them_ was. She was just presuming it was rugby, because it seemed unlikely that Mbege was secretly on the school quiz team.

Was she his girlfriend? They hadn't covered that one. Did _dating_ also mean _girlfriend_ and _boyfriend_? She really wasn't very good at this.

"I'm not so sure." Miller offered. "We got owned last week." He looked rather downcast at the thought.

"I think you'll do great." She heard an optimistic voice pipe up and belatedly realised it was her own. Oh dear. So much for working on not panicking. "I hear the whole team is more solid since you two swapped positions. You should be feeling really confident. And you should know that your team mates really appreciate you." She had been pretty sure that anyone with even the vaguest actual knowledge of rugby would be able to see right through that charade, but clearly she had overestimated the intelligence of some of these young men. Or perhaps, her less cynical side wondered, she had underestimated their propensity to look for good in other people.

"Thanks, Clarke." Miller was smiling at her. "That's kind of you."

"You see? We'll smash them." She thought that was probably the Mbege equivalent of _thanks, Clarke._ She breathed a sigh of relief at her relatively successful foray into the field of talking to Bellamy's mates about sport, and settled more deeply into the sofa cushions and his arm.

"So you _were_ listening to me? I'm honoured." He was saying to her now.

"I always listen to your fascinating rugby-related insights." She told him with something of an angelic expression, and he leaned in to drop a soft kiss on her cheek while Miller laughed heartily.

Raven suddenly appeared on the left of her field of vision, looking none too pleased.

"Clarke, Emori. Question four on the Maths? I know it should be easy, but it's bothering me." She racked her brain, trying to remember which one had been question four. Was that the intercepts of that transformation of the cos graph? Or had it been something else entirely?

"Zero or two pi." Bellamy informed her while the rest of them were still gathering their thoughts.

"I'm sorry?" Raven looked at him as if he had just grown an extra set of eyebrows.

"The answer to question four is zero or two pi. I'm pretty sure that was question four. Nasty transformation of a cos graph? I just did it last night. If that's the right question, that's definitely the right answer."

"Yeah, it's that one. How -?" Raven seemed lost for words, which was something of an unusual occurrence. To be fair, it wasn't often that this particular girl found herself shown up in the field of Mathematics by a jock.

"It wasn't _that_ bad. We can go through it if you want."

"No, no, that's the answer I eventually got. I just wanted to check it. But how did _you_ know that was the answer?"

"I also study Maths. You may have seen me sitting in your classroom. I'm not _completely_ incompetent." He paused just long enough for her to gape like a confused carp for a moment before continuing. "Also Clarke checked my answers, that helped."

"To be fair, he already had them all correct." She defended him, and received another peck on the cheek for her trouble. She was beginning to get the hang of this reward system, she thought.

"Right. No. This." Murphy broke in, somewhat incoherently. "We need to talk about this, not question four and two fucking pi. What the fuck is this?" He gestured in the general direction of the place where the two of them sat together, identifying himself as the first one to _say something_.

"Zero _or_ two pi." Clarke corrected him cheerfully.

"You did seem convinced we were not platonic friends." Bellamy reminded him nonchalantly.

"No, no." Clarke corrected him. "That was Emori. _This_ is why you should not drown your rugby-related sorrows in alcohol."

"OK, sure, sure, but he implied it."

" _Implied_ is not the same as _convinced_ -" He cut her off with a firm kiss on the lips.

"Does that answer your question, Murphy?" Raven asked with a grin, and then the bell rang, and left him to his confusion.

…...

Clarke didn't know what to expect from spending an afternoon at Bellamy's to _watch some TV_. She'd mentioned the invitation to Raven, who had explained to her with infinite patience that _Netlix and chill_ was actually _sex_ , and she had her sneaking suspicions that this date invitation might actually belong in the same semantic field. And that would be fine, really, because she wasn't about to deny that sex with Bellamy sounded like quite a good idea, but she wasn't quite so sure what _he_ would make of sex with _her_. It wasn't exactly like she was endowed with a great amount of expertise in that area. Certainly, she was rather less experienced than he was. And he was a pretty impressive physical specimen and she was – well – Clarke.

So it was that she found herself distinctly nervous as she rang the doorbell to his house at 14:01 that Saturday afternoon. Raven had reminded her that being early probably looked a little desperate, so one minute late seemed like a good compromise. He answered the door, looking distressingly attractive with a sort of recently-showered-rumpled-hair thing going on, and she made a concerted effort to remember to breathe. She fully intended to say _hi_ , or something similar, but it seemed she was destined never to get the opportunity. As soon as he realised it was her, his hands were cradling her hips and his lips were on hers and it became quite clear that she was unlikely to be saying anything for quite some time.

After a kiss that she couldn't help feeling was all too short but his over-inquisitive nextdoor neighbour seemed to think had been inappropriately long, Bellamy detached his lips from hers and ushered her into the house.

"Your nextdoor neighbour is not happy with you." She commented when he had shut the door behind them.

"It seems that way." He agreed with a grin, before reversing her into the now-closed door and picking up where they had left off.

Perhaps Raven's suggestions about Bellamy's goal for the afternoon had not been too far wrong, she thought, before she gave up on thinking altogether and got on with simply enjoying the warmth of his mouth against hers.

"That was – something." She stammered incoherently when he eventually pulled away and made it to an entire arm's length distant from her.

"Just saying hello." He offered with a smirk. "How was your morning?"

"Thrilling. Read many many journal articles about mosquito-borne diseases. How was yours?"

"Really good." He told her with a relaxed smile. "We won. By quite a long way. And, not to brag or anything, but I was pretty awesome. Top scorer by a few miles." For someone who projected such confidence, she thought, he looked surprisingly self-conscious about blowing his own trumpet now.

"I knew you'd do great. I should have come and watched." She offered apologetically, thinking that supporting him at games was probably a girlfriendish thing to do.

"I'm actually pleased you didn't. Don't take that the wrong way. I think I'd have been pretty nervous if I knew you were watching, while this is all so new." He gestured between the two of them. "Also after playing so badly last weekend. I think it was actually the best of both worlds, knowing that you believed in me and that I'd get to see you this afternoon but without the pressure of you actually being there to see it if I did screw up."

"So I'm never allowed to come support you in person?" She asked, eyebrow quirked.

"No, I'd like it if you did one day, I guess. Maybe in a while when I'm less nervous that you're going to think better of all this and ditch me." He tried to say it as if it were a joke, but she knew him better than that by now. Unfortunately she wasn't really in a position to give any response to his concern that was both useful and honest, so she pulled him in for a kiss instead. He could make of that what he would, she thought. When they separated again, he took her hand and led the way up the stairs to his room, chattering away about how wonderful the game had been all the while. She was grateful for that, because it wasn't a conversation that required a lot of input from her so she was free to fret to her heart's content about what, in fact, might be expected of her when they arrived at his bedroom.

"Miller says hi, by the way." He continued now. "He's decided he's a fan of yours since you pretended to give a damn about rugby to make him feel better yesterday. He's so thoughtful that when I said you were coming over he gave me his Netflix password so that we could watch Scrubs all afternoon." There it was, she thought, the dreaded mention of Netflix. Raven had clearly been on to something. "If watching Scrubs via someone else's password isn't romance, I don't know what is." He carried on, seemingly oblivious to the fact her mind was elsewhere. "Clarke? Is everything alright?" OK, maybe not so oblivious. "I'm sorry, I know it's not the world's most exciting date. I just thought... Well, you do love Scrubs. And I didn't think you minded staying in instead of me taking you out somewhere, but if I was wrong, we can -"

She shut him up with a kiss again, a tactic that she was fast growing fond of. "It's not that at all, Bellamy. I don't expect you to take me out on fancy dates. And I do love Scrubs." She couldn't have him thinking that there was anything wrong with the fact that his modest circumstances required modest dates.

"Then what's wrong?" He asked softly, taking a seat on his bed and pulling her down to sit at his side. "Because you don't seem happy, Clarke."

"I am." She told him firmly. "It's just that, you know, I believe I know what _Netflix and chill_ is and I'm a little nervous, I suppose." She kept her eyes fixed on the carpet.

"Ohh." She could hear the dawning realisation in his voice. "I see. That's OK, Clarke. We don't have to do that at all. I can see why you were worried now, and what this looks like, but I promise that's not what I was trying to engineer here." He sounded nervous, as if he was now worried that he'd screwed up. "I genuinely did think you might like to watch Scrubs, I wasn't trying to push you into anything you didn't want to do."

"No, I do want to." She told him quietly but firmly, gaze still glued on the stained beige beneath her feet. "I do. It's just that – I'm nervous about it. Because you're _you_ , and I'm _me_ , and don't let this go to your head but you're a little bit intimidatingly hot, also I understand quite experienced in this area, and I'm not."

"That's OK, Clarke. That's fine. I'm not very experienced in trying to have an actual relationship with one girl I actually really like, so we're both doing things we're nervous about." He told her, and she felt her heart sing just a little at the news that he was at least somewhat seriously into her. "Have you – sorry, feel free to tell me to fuck off – but have you, you know, done it before?" She giggled a little at that, because it seemed that smooth talking womanising Bellamy Blake actually was feeling pretty nervous, if he was struggling so much to phrase that one question.

"Yes." She told him simply. "But not often. Also mostly with a girl." She wondered if she ought not to have told him that, in retrospect. Was he likely to be funny about that?

"OK." He said calmly, because _of course_ this distressingly perfect arch nemesis of hers would turn out also to be completely tolerant. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I'll still think you're awesome no matter how it goes, but it seems like you've probably got some idea what's what." He shrugged.

"The thing is that one of the things I particularly feel like I ought to know how to do is _not_ much helped by previous experience with a girl." She told him, having something in mind that she thought would contribute rather a lot, if she did it right, to his attachment to her and therefore to the plan. "Because one of the things I very much want to be able to do is to suck you off, because I understand that guys like that, and I'd like to make you happy." She felt her cheeks flame at her boldness and heard him give a sharp gasp from beside her.

"I'm pretty sure you'll work it out, Princess." He told her, and she finally summoned the courage to look up and meet his dark eyes with her own. "Making me happy seems to come quite naturally to you." He told her, and reached out to tuck a strand of her hair back behind her ear, and she felt her stomach do a bit of a swooping motion within her.

"Could I give it a go now, then?" She asked, because curiosity was, after all, her thing, but also because she found herself rather enjoying the way he was currently looking at her and thinking that it might be nice to have more of that in her life.

"I mean, I'm certainly not going to say no, but you really don't have to. I honestly did invite you here to watch TV." He was making a concerted effort to be reasonable, she thought, but he was rather giving himself away with the look in his eyes and with the way that the bulge in his jeans looked somewhat larger than it had when they had started this conversation.

"I want to." She insisted, and reached for his belt.

It turned out that sucking him off was actually quite an enjoyable experience, she decided. Certainly, it was not without its inconveniences, because there was really quite _a lot_ of him, and that made for something of a challenge, and also because she hadn't exactly had much practice at this so her endurance wasn't quite where she might have liked it to be. And no one had warned her quite how unpleasant the conclusion would taste. Those drawbacks were more than made up for by the obvious pure pleasure he took from her efforts, and the rather flattering habit he had of telling her she was beautiful all the time, and the somewhat flustering tendency he had to call out her name on a regular basis. But those factors paled into insignificance compared to the feeling of power, of having him utterly at her mercy, hanging onto her hair for dear life, falling apart before her eyes. It was, she thought, something she could rather get used to.

Her task accomplished, the two of them rearranged themselves into their original seats side by side on the bed. Bellamy made no attempt to rearrange his clothing, however, and she wondered if perhaps she was supposed to help him with that. She also wondered what was meant to happen next, because the silence was beginning to grow and he hadn't spoken since crying out her name as he virtually exploded all over the back of her throat. Did she ought to say something? Had she done OK? No, that was foolish. She was absolutely certain she'd done OK. She didn't need to have a long history of promiscuity to know when she'd just made her boyfriend's day. Not that they'd finalised the terminology situation, of course. She'd just decided that _boyfriend_ was an easy mental shorthand at this moment in time.

Her train of though was broken by an arm coming round her shoulders and hugging her tight, and Bellamy burying his face in her hair.

"Looks like I was right." He murmured. "Making me happy is evidently a thing you're rather good at." She giggled, and he pulled away just a little so that she could see his face.

"I enjoyed that." She told him with an impish grin. "I hope you won't mind if I do that quite often."

"I wouldn't object at all." He kissed her softly on the lips. "In case you didn't figure it out from my reaction, that was pretty awesome." He said lightly.

"I guessed." She told him, unable to resist the urge to feel at least a little smug, and kissed him in turn. He responded by weaving a hand through her hair and pulling her close, and she relaxed into another one of those excellent make out sessions. It was, she found herself thinking, _convenient_ that he hadn't rectified his clothing situation. That might come in useful, at this rate.

"We don't seem to be watching Scrubs." She teased him in between kisses after a couple of minutes. She decided his T shirt had become superfluous and made a start on removing it.

"Are you complaining?" He asked in turn, as his hand began to skim the waistline of her jeans.

"Not at all." She assured him. "Round two?"

"Absolutely." He agreed, and pushed her back against the bed.

…...

They did watch some Scrubs eventually, but even then, she wasn't sure they were exactly _concentrating_ on it. It had taken them a bit of a while to move on from just lying curled around each other on his bed feeling happy about the world, and when they did finally start moving they basically only got as far as throwing some clothes on and setting up his laptop to play before they retreated back to the bed, her sitting up against the wall, him lying with his head in her lap. She immediately took advantage of the opportunity to run her fingers through his hair to her heart's content, because the way those dark tousled curls fell over his forehead had always been something of a source of fascination to her.

On a completely objective and scientific level, of course. She had just always wondered how, exactly, her arch-nemesis had such great hair.

"You OK there?" He looked up at her with a smirk.

"Shh. I'm enjoying myself." She informed him, and carried on.

"Well, if I'd known you were so easy to please I wouldn't have put so much effort in just now." He teased her.

"I'm pleased you did." She informed him conversationally. "It was pretty great." And it had been, really. Not perfect, of course, because they didn't know each other that well yet, and because she was still feeling a bit anxious about all this and when he'd had his mouth on her, well, she had to admit, she'd not really relaxed and enjoyed it as much as she might have hoped. She'd been pretty tense, too, when he'd first been trying to get his cock inside of her, but it turned out he had something of a gift for getting her to open up for him. Overall, between the fact that he was at least a little bit beautiful and also ridiculously considerate it had been, she would say, a slightly awesome time.

"Yeah." He breathed, and reached up to stroke her calf. "I would second that."

"I'm sorry I was a bit... nervous." She went for, in the end.

"Don't be." He told her simply. "If only because that won't actually help you be less nervous next time." He threw her a smile. "Seriously, though, you have no idea how much I enjoyed that. Partly because it was incredible, but also because it was _you_. Hopefully you'll get less nervous with more practice." He smirked.

"I hope so." She agreed, and bent forward to drop a soft kiss onto his lips. It wasn't, she had to admit, the most comfortable move, requiring flexibility she thought probably only a gymnast would truly possess, but it was worth it for the slightly dazed look on his face.

They actually watched Scrubs for a little while after that, or at least pretended to. She had a sneaking suspicion that both of them were actually more interested in watching each other.

"So there's something really important we need to discuss." He stated eventually, and she found herself wondering what on Earth he could possibly mean. He hadn't said it in a particularly _fierce_ kind of a way, but it didn't seem likely to be a _happy_ thing.

"Yes?" She asked, somewhat nervous.

"I like you a lot, as you may have noticed, but I refuse to become the kind of boyfriend who wastes my time and yours on ending every text with dozens of kisses." She breathed a sigh of relief that it was, in fact, not anything terrible, and giggled slightly in spite of the mock-serious tone of his voice. "Please can we establish a firm three kiss limit?"

"I think we can agree on that." She was perfectly willing to let him win that one, because she had most certainly just heard him refer to himself as her _boyfriend_. She could probably agree to letting him win anything, just as long as she won on that front.

"Thank goodness for -" He broke off abruptly at a noise from downstairs, as if someone had just come through the front door, and she raised her brow at him in an enquiring sort of a way.

"My sister." He informed her with a smile. "I reckon she'll be here to pester you in approximately thirty seconds."

Sure enough, the sound of Octavia's voice drifted up the stairs. "Bell, I'm home!"

"I noticed!" He yelled back, and made a quick attempt to smooth the bedclothes before seating himself demurely at the opposite end of the bed while Clarke laughed at his vain attempts to conceal the evidence of their earlier entertainment.

"Is Clarke still here?" She heard Octavia ask as footsteps sounded on the stairs, and she gave a cheery _hello_ of her own by way of response.

Seconds later, the younger girl burst into the room without knocking, an excited smile on her face.

"You might want to learn to knock." Her brother suggested pointedly. "That might be a good idea when I have invited a girl over."

"Whatever." His sister shrugged. "You weren't doing anything." Clarke felt her face flame, and thought that, probably, Octavia could now read that they _had_ been doing something at some point.

"I think you should learn to knock." He repeated, clearly attempting to do a bit of a fierce elder brother routine, but Octavia ignored him and plonked herself on the bed between the two of them.

"Have you had a nice Saturday, Clarke?" She asked.

"Yes, thanks." She responded, desperately fishing around in her brain for a more interesting but appropriate response. Thankfully, none was needed, because Octavia had plenty to say of her own.

"Did you enjoy the ice cream date? My brother wouldn't shut up about it all evening. Kind of boring, actually, yet pretty sweet too I suppose."

"O -" Bellamy didn't seem entirely pleased with the turn the conversation was taking, she thought.

"It was pretty awesome." Clarke admitted, failing to stop the broad and genuine smile that was spreading over her face without her permission.

"Cute." Octavia commented. "I'm pleased he finally got the guts to make a move. He's been going on about you for weeks."

"Octavia Blake, I swear, if you ever bring a date home I will make your life a misery." Bellamy fumed ineffectually. "Did you actually need to speak to me, or are you just here to make us uncomfortable?"

"Oh, yes. What's the plan? Do you know if mum's going to be home tonight?"

"No, she said she wouldn't." Clarke couldn't help but notice that he was avoiding her gaze as he answered his sister's question, looking even more awkward than he did during her recent blatant teasing. "I'll make us some supper in a bit."

"Cool." Octavia seemed perfectly happy with that answer, and she made a mental note of the fact that, it appeared, their mother staying out overnight and Bellamy looking after his sister was not an uncommon occurrence. Complicated home life, indeed. "You staying for supper, Clarke?"

"I wasn't planning to. I should probably go home before my mum wonders why I suddenly have a social life." She offered apologetically.

"Oh." Octavia looked downcast, and she rather thought Bellamy did to. "Maybe another time?" The younger girl asked.

"Yeah, definitely."

There was a sort of awkward silence after that, in which Bellamy stared pointedly at his sister in a _why are you sitting in my room when I am on a date_ kind of a way, and Octavia seemed to be fishing around for an excuse as to why she was, in fact, sitting in his room while he was on a date, and Clarke checked her phone for something to do and was rather surprised on noticing the time.

"In fact, I really should be going. I'm sorry. I told my mum I'd be home four minutes ago."

"You know, I think your precise timekeeping is one of the things I find most attractive about you." Bellamy told her in a tone that made it abundantly clear that, in fact, it was not so.

"Not sure if cute or gross." Octavia commented. "Either way, I'm out of here. I suspect I do not want to watch the pair of you say goodbye. Great to see you, Clarke." She offered her a hug and then vanished out of the door.

"I'm so pleased we went for that ice cream on Thursday." She told him into the silence his sister left behind.

"Me too." He agreed, smile splitting his face. "It was one of my better ideas."

"I really should go." She said, making no effort to leave.

"I disagree." He countered. "I think you should stay here for the whole evening, or even overnight, and we should continue with practising those same skills we tried out earlier." He smirked suggestively at her. "And then, maybe-"

She cut him off with a kiss, which it seemed he was only too happy to return. At length she managed to convince him to allow her to make it downstairs, and even out of the door, where she found herself embroiled in another rather fantastic make-out session.

Meanwhile Bellamy's over-inquisitive nextdoor neighbour continued to look on in some alarm.


	10. Chapter 10

As Monday lunchtime rolled around, Clarke found herself wondering quite what to do about seating arrangements.

"Are you not eating with Bellamy?" Emori asked her, direct as ever, as she walked towards the lunch hall with her and Raven. She reminded herself that this question probably stemmed from genuine curiosity rather than a desire to get rid of her, but all the same, she found herself feeling a little superfluous.

"I thought I should hang out with you guys and not always abandon you for him." She tried for a nonchalant shrug.

"We have half our timetable together and spent morning break looking at chemistry memes with you, Clarke. We don't feel abandoned." Emori reassured her surprisingly patiently. "You're welcome to go be adorable with Bellamy. We quite understand."

"What she's trying to say is that, if one of us were dating Bellamy Blake, we would be physically incapable of leaving his side." Raven told her with her usual subtlety and a knowing grin.

"Don't be foolish, Raven. John's great. Although, I have to say, it might be nice to have him slightly more obviously lovestruck like Bellamy is these days."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Please, he's absolutely devoted to you. It'd be nauseating if it wasn't so damn sweet." Raven decided.

"It's just because it's all so new, I think?"

"John wasn't quite like that even when we were just getting together. But then again, he is John." Emori's pragmatism – and odd taste in men – never ceased to amaze her.

"We're getting off topic." Raven pointed out as they entered the lunch hall. "Basically, you should totally go eat with Bellamy and we'll catch you later."

She stopped arguing at that point, and strengthened her resolve. Taking a deep breath, she made her way nervously towards the table that Bellamy and his crowd usually occupied. She sighed in relief when his face lit up upon seeing her and he gestured to the chair that Murphy normally occupied by his side.

"Princess. Hey. Have a seat."

"You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." He greeted her with a peck on the cheek.

"How has your morning been?" She asked. "I haven't seen you in, what, two hours? You must have a lot of news to share."

"Well, I'm pretty sure this hot blonde girl was checking me out in chemistry."

"Wow, smooth."

"Always."

The relaxed atmosphere suddenly soured at the appearance of a somewhat irate John Murphy.

"Princess Griffin."

"John Murphy."

"That's my seat." She felt Bellamy stir at her side, but she put a hand on his thigh to indicate he was to stay out of this. She looked at Murphy appraisingly for a moment before speaking.

"I respectfully disagree. And as it happens, I have it on good authority that a seat just opened up over there," she pointed to her former place, "next to a young woman who, for reasons that remain unclear to me, thinks you are worth her time. And she did recently tell me that it might be nice if you were more _obviously lovestruck_. So, you know, you might find going over there and making her day a better use of your lunch break than hanging around here arguing with me."

There was a beat of silence, in which she found herself wondering which way this might go.

"Fair play, Griffin." He nodded at her with something that looked almost like respect and set out to follow her suggestion.

"Have a nice day, Murphy."

…...

The end of their chemistry lesson, and with it the end of the school day, was drawing near, as Bellamy returned from putting their Bunsen burner away muttering cheerful complaints about how she always expected him to tidy up.

"My mum's working late tonight." She told him when she could get a word in edgewise. "She just texted, I should have the house to myself until about eight. Is that information of any interest to you?"

"Yes." He stated vehemently, visibly perking up at the idea. "Yes it is."

"Scrubs?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow and hoping he got the idea, because if she said _Netflix and chill_ in earshot of Raven she knew she would never hear the end of it.

"Definitely." He agreed with an easy grin. "I'd better tell O to walk herself home and let me know when she gets there in one piece." He turned his back to Pike as a vague nod to subtlety before fishing his phone out of his pocket.

"So I'll meet you in the common room after chess club?" She asked, tossing the blue tissue she'd used to wipe down their desk into the bin.

"Chess club?" He asked, an incredulous slant to his brows.

"Chess club." She confirmed, wondering how he had managed to miss this fixture of her extra-curricular calendar. "It's Tuesday today."

"Yes – but – Scrubs? You're still going to _chess club_?" He was looking at her like she'd lost her mind.

"Yes." She confirmed, not quite seeing why this was a surprise to him. Going to chess club was a thing Clarke Griffin did.

"You'd rather play _chess_ than, you know, what we did on Saturday?" He seemed to be getting annoyed now, and she couldn't really see any grounds for that.

"It's not as simple as that, Bellamy. I go to chess club on a Tuesday."

"Can't you just say you have a headache or something?" He sounded distinctly _displeased_ , she thought, but she was growing a bit displeased too, if she was being honest. The bell rang, and people started moving, but neither of them seemed inclined to follow.

"No, Bellamy, I can't. I want to go to chess club, because that is a _commitment_ that I go to on a Tuesday, and no, I am not willing to lie to get out of it."

"You're actually choosing chess over screwing me?" He asked, oblivious to the risk of being overheard. He sounded an odd mixture of furious and offended, she thought.

"No." She told him sharply, thoroughly done with his egotistical reaction to the situation. "I am choosing being myself over being reduced to _your girlfriend_." She picked up her belongings and marched from the room.

On arriving at chess club, she proceeded to concentrate wholeheartedly on playing the game and had rather a successful afternoon, thank you very much. She won every one of her matches with panache – in as much as _panache_ could ever really be a feature of chess - because boy drama was not going to stand in the way of her being an absolute queen in this particular kingdom. Bellamy Blake was not going to throw her off her game that easily. By the time she returned to her locker to gather her possessions she was riding high on the warm glow of satisfied competitiveness, and working very hard not to let the thought of her upcoming lonely evening dent her spirits.

She was rather taken aback when she entered the common room to see Bellamy jump to his feet, put aside a book, and hold out a pack of fruit pastilles.

"Fruit pastille?" He asked unnecessarily, while she stared at him with scarcely concealed confusion. "I made it to the corner shop before I realised I'd been an absolute idiot. I'm sorry." He muttered quietly.

She accepted the fruit pastilles, because that seemed like the easiest place to start.

"I should never have asked you to miss chess." He continued even though she was yet to speak. "It was selfish and inconsiderate. You would never expect me to miss training. You're right, you're not _j_ _ust my girlfriend_. The fact you are your own person is one of the reasons why – why I like you really quite a lot. And why I'm now rambling and offering you conciliatory fruit pastilles and telling you I'm sorry."

She wasn't quite sure how to answer any of that, so she took the easy way out and wrapped her arms around him in a graceless but enthusiastic hug.

"You're forgiven." She murmured against his chest. "It's hardly the end of the world, and I really do like fruit pastilles. It's just that I think it could be quite easy, wrapped up in the fairy tale that is dating you, to lose sight of being _me_. I want to keep on top of my schoolwork, and keep doing all of the things that make me _me_."

"I get that." He told her softly. "I'll try not to do it again."

"And I'll maybe consider being a little more reasonable next time we have a disagreement." She said, acknowledging that probably she could have explained herself earlier rather than only being stubborn. She drew back and reached up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "You still want to come over and watch Scrubs?"

"If you still want me to."

"Of course I do. You're ridiculously attractive _and_ you bought me fruit pastilles _and_ you just sat here reading about van Loos for over an hour while I played chess. Boyfriends don't get better than that."

He pulled her into a prolonged and rather enthusiastic kiss by way of response.

"We're wasting Scrubs time." She reminded him with a smirk as she pulled away and got on with packing her bags.

"Did you recently describe dating me as a _fairy tale_?" He asked while she tried and failed to locate her chemistry question sheet.

"Yes." She agreed briskly. "Don't let it go to your head. As it happens, I used to think of you as a dragon, actually." She admitted in a rare moment of honesty that she was pretty sure she would soon regret.

"I don't blame you." He said simply. "I was a bit of a monster."

"Thankfully no longer." She reached up to kiss him on the cheek and then started walking.

"So... What do you think of me as now?" He asked, with his trademark smooth smirk, and she laughed.

"Definitely a knight." She told him firmly, treading further down the treacherous path of regrettable honesty. "A knight in shining armour. A _fruit pastille wielding_ knight in shining armour."

...

She would never be able to look at the living room in the same way again, she thought, as she reclaimed control of her breathing and relaxed against the cushions of the sofa. Sure, the use of that particular piece of furniture had hardly been a surprise, being as it was not that different from a bed, and arranging him on that chair so that she could ride him _just so_ to her satisfaction, well, that was something she'd been wanting to try for longer than she cared to admit.

She'd been a bit surprised that he'd managed to find a use for the coffee table, though.

"I suppose we ought to tidy up at some point." She murmured into his collarbone. He was showing no sign of getting up off her any time soon, and she thought that gravity would imply she ought to feel squished, but actually it was surprisingly comfortable.

"I don't want to." She could hear the pout in his voice.

"Hey, it was your idea to make most of this mess." She teased him. There really was quite a lot of miscellaneous detritus on the floor from where he'd swept it impatiently off that coffee table. She was pretty sure they'd never be able to put every newspaper and every file back perfectly enough to fool her mother.

"What was I supposed to do? Going upstairs would have been a waste of precious time." He pressed a lazy kiss against her hairline.

"You're ridiculous." She accused him, nuzzling into his neck.

"You enjoyed it." He lifted his weight off her just enough to look down into her eyes.

"Yes. Yes I did." She admitted cheerfully. "Come on, get off me. We have things to do."

They did manage to move after that, putting both the room and their respective states of dress to rights. She spent no small amount of time on re-dis-arranging the items that lived on the coffee table, while he relocated and plumped the sofa cushions. There was nothing to be done about the chair, she decided. She couldn't actually find any tangible remains of the fun that had been had there, but somehow she thought she could still _see_ what they'd done. She hoped that her mother didn't have this same sixth sense.

"Is this the point where we actually do watch Scrubs?" He asked as she did one last sweep of the room before taking a seat on the sofa.

"It could be." She agreed, deciding that sitting upright just required too much effort and curling up with her head in his lap.

"You OK, Princess?"

"Yes. I am very much OK."

"Good. Me too." He stroked her hair for a bit while Scrubs started playing.

"Can I take you out for an ice cream date on Thursday?" She asked after a while, because she thought that probably they were going to see each other around the library visit she presumed they were sharing but she wanted to be sure. It was, she decided, a bit scary, this whole relationship thing, and trying to tell him she wanted to spend time with him without sounding _needy_.

"I'd like that." He said simply, and continued his stroking of her hair.

"Good. I look forward to it."

"You know on Saturday, when I said I didn't think I was ready for you to start showing up at rugby matches?"

"Yeah."

"I changed my mind. Or, well, you changed my mind, really. It's pretty difficult to be nervous about making a fool of myself in front of you when you seem so – you know – supportive and things. And this Saturday is our last match before the holidays, and it's quite a big one, and O will be there too, and Emori might go I guess, so you wouldn't be the only bored girl sitting around pretending to watch out of loyalty, and, well, if you wanted to come that would be great."

"Of course I'd like to come. One condition though."

"Yes?"

"Scrubs afternoon afterwards?"

"Of course. Do you want to see if you can maybe stay for supper this time?"

"I thought I might go one better than that, actually. I thought I might ask my mother if I can sleep over at Raven's." She offered, hoping he understood the implication of her suggestion.

"Yeah?"

"If you want me to stay over, of course. If you think it's too soon, obviously that's OK too."

"Relax, Clarke. I'd like that a lot."

…...

Clarke was finding conversations with Raven and Emori increasingly difficult recently. She thought she was perhaps in danger of losing track of what she was supposed to be concealing from whom, between the fact that she couldn't be honest about the plan in front of anyone but Raven and the hunch she had that, possibly, she didn't ought to tell the entire world what Bellamy was really like. This was a challenge, really, as her friends were unsurprisingly keen to hear every detail of her happiness.

"I'm still no closer to understanding what you two talk even about." Raven commented on Thursday morning. She was nothing if not persistent, Clarke had to give her that.

"We've covered this, Raven. Chemistry puns, Roman emperors, occasional rugby." She summarised briskly.

"You cannot build a relationship entirely on that." Raven decided, although Clarke thought that Emori didn't seem at all concerned.

"It's not entirely that. We also hang out sometimes." She shrugged. "As a matter of fact, we have a date planned for tonight."

"You do?" Emori now seemed more interested.

"Yes." She confirmed, and wondered how to go about changing the subject.

"Yes...? Do we get details?"

"I'm not sure -" She was interrupted by Bellamy arriving and saying good morning in his preferred way. It was, she thought, rather a relief that he had interrupted her floundering attempts to say little about their plans. No one could be expected to spill the beans on a relationship whilst kissing quite so thoroughly.

"That's enough of that, thank you." Raven told them smartly after not quite long enough for Clarke's liking.

"Sorry." Bellamy grinned completely unapologetically. "Don't let me interrupt your conversation."

"Bit late for that." Emori told him with a slant to her brow that indicated she didn't entirely object.

"As it happens, Clarke was just telling us all about your plans for this evening." Raven informed him smoothly and, she felt, a little too cunningly.

"Can't beat a good library-and-ice-cream date." He said easily, starting to sort out his books and not entirely concentrating on the conversation, while Clarke felt her jaw hit the floor in shock at how completely unconcerned he seemed about what he'd just revealed.

"You speak as if you have experience of library-and-ice-cream dates." Raven commented neutrally.

"Of course. Did Clarke not tell you about last week?" He looked between her and her friends with some surprise and, she thought, perhaps just a little bit of hurt.

"I didn't know if you'd want me broadcasting your private life to the entire world."

"Maybe not the entire world, Princess, but I wouldn't judge you for wanting to have a girly chat with your friends."

"Oh. You sure?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Well. I am going to go and hand in this History essay while you guys catch up." He smirked, making it quite clear that he considered himself a subject of great interest and importance, before leaving the room.

No sooner had he disappeared than Emori pounced. "That is _adorable_ , Clarke. Ice cream?"

"Yeah." She confirmed, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. "He took me out for ice cream, I'm returning the favour tonight."

"Never mind ice cream." Raven cut in. "What's all this about the library?"

"We go to the library together." She decided to keep it concise and factual.

"Bellamy Blake goes to the library. Wow. He must really like you." Raven shook her head in confusion.

"He – erm – he already went, actually. That's sort of how we got to know each other."

"You bonded over visiting the _library_?" Her usually intelligent friend seemed to be struggling to grasp this particular concept.

"Yes. Probably don't tell the entire school that, though. I'm not sure he'd want people to know."

"Oh, please, Clarke." Emori looked at her as if she was being at least a little ridiculous. "I'm pretty sure you could tell people whatever you liked and he'd still look at you like you hung the moon."

The problem, Clarke thought, was that she was starting to believe Emori might have a point.


	11. Chapter 11

Clarke didn't know much about rugby matches, and she knew even less about attending them to cheer for a boyfriend, but it turned out that her hunch about what the experience might be like was correct in one key regard.

It was absolutely freezing.

She was already wearing a rather cute item of knitwear that her mother had bought her last Christmas underneath her coat, as well as a complete set of scarf and hat and gloves, but somehow she was still shivering. The things she went through for the sake of the plan.

She rather wished she'd forgone any attempt at looking _cute_ and just worn head-to-toe skiing thermals.

She also rather wished she'd actually _read_ that book that Bellamy had made her borrow, rather than being distracted by other priorities such as completing her school work and going out on dates with him. She had to admit that she had very little idea what was actually happening on the field in front of her, beyond the fact that Ark High seemed to be winning their last match of the term quite comfortably, even though they were still six minutes short of half time, and that Bellamy mostly seemed to be the player to thank for this development. She was fairly sure he was playing pretty well, not that she found herself with the necessary background knowledge to judge, but the fact that he had occasionally looked up and grinned at her after scoring seemed to be a hint that he was broadly happy with the situation.

Sure enough, there he was again, running rather quickly through a largely empty patch of field while the opposition scrambled in a slightly panicked way and failed to stop him. She thought that, perhaps, by now they ought to have realised that what they were doing wasn't working so well, but she supposed she was in no position to criticise them.

"How can someone so stacked run so fast?" She asked Emori with no small feeling of awe. She had suspected he wasn't bad at this whole sport thing, but she was beginning to feel a bit flustered at this display of athleticism.

"Pretty sure Stirling's actually faster." Emori commented, gesturing to the rather scrawnier boy with the number fourteen on his shirt. "I think Bellamy's secret is a combination of running straight through every vague attempt at tackling him and being such a cocky bastard that the opposition are already scared of him."

"That does sound like my brother." Octavia agreed cheerfully.

"I'd love to agree, Emori, but I have no idea what's going on." She admitted.

"Do you want me to explain?" Octavia offered in a chirpy sort of way. "I have spent a lot of my childhood watching my brother play this ridiculous game. I'm only too happy to help."

"I think that might be best. I don't really understand what's what."

"OK, let's start simple. Bell's job is basically to get the ball and then keep running until he scores."

"Yes, actually, I had managed to get that far. Why are there twenty-nine other people on the pitch? Some of them don't seem to be doing muchl."

"Well, big guys like Mbege and Miller, their job is basically to run into people, try to stop the other team's Bellamy from scoring, that kind of thing."

"The other team don't have a Bellamy. That's why they're losing." She pointed out. She may have been out of her comfort zone, but she was no idiot.

"That's some pretty admirable loyalty to my brother, but you get my point. Anyway, the forwards also do important things in the set pieces but I think you wouldn't really appreciate that."

"I might do."

"It won't help you flatter Bellamy. I'd leave it." Emori advised sagely.

"As Emori's already pointed out, Stirling's obviously not as big as Bell, but he's fast, so he hangs out on the other wing."

"So he's basically trying to do the running and scoring thing too?"

"Yes. To be fair, he's not bad. Still doing better than the other team put together."

"I don't understand what Murphy does." She gestured to the boy running around with a number thirteen on his back, because she felt that it wasn't really fair that all this chat was about Bellamy and Emori hadn't been given much chance to be lovestruck.

"He basically runs around a lot so that other people can do their jobs." Emori told her. "He likes to call it _creating space_ when he's trying to impress me with some anecdote about how awesome he is. He also gets to tackle people a lot, which I'm sure you can imagine he enjoys."

"That does sound like it would suit him."

"Anything else you'd like to know?"

"Erm. Do we get to actually speak to our menfolk at some point?"

"They'll probably be occupied with team talk and drinking lucozade and things at half time."

"Oh." She tried not to sound too disappointed, but failed miserably.

"You'll have to put up with our delightful company a bit longer." Emori told her with a grin.

"Sorry, no offence."

"None taken. My brother's ridiculously happy with you, I'm not complaining."

"He is?" She tried to convince herself that this desperate need to hear more about how happy he was with her stemmed entirely from devotion to the plan and was almost successful.

"Yep. I've never seen him like this. I was taking the piss out of him on Thursday night when he came in from your date, and he said something totally cheesy about how he could _be himself_ with you."

"Chemistry puns and all." Emori contributed very helpfully.

The whistle went for half time, and sure enough, thirty muddy teenagers traipsed into the warmth and comfort of the changing rooms while their assorted womenfolk continued to shiver on the assortment of benches that lined the side of the pitch.

"How are you two not freezing?" She asked.

"I've done this before." Emori said, unsurprisingly. "I'm wearing my rugby-girlfriend-thermals. I just have to remember to remove them before John does."

"Wow. I did not need to know that."

"What? It's a useful tip, from one of the sisterhood to another."

"No. Stop. I don't like where this is going." Octavia looked slightly horrified. "You are not going to start talking about my brother and his idiot friends like _that_."

"I quite agree." Clarke decided firmly. "What are -" She stopped abruptly at the sight of Bellamy jogging in their general direction with something in his hand.

"Isn't that my brother?"

"Yes. What is he doing coming over here? You said he had to listen to team talk and drink lucozade."

"I have no idea."

"What's he carrying?" Emori wondered aloud at the bundle he was holding.

"Hey." He called as soon as he was within earshot. "How are you enjoying your first experience of sitting on a bench for the sake of my ego?"

"It's brilliant." She lied through her teeth with a bright smile. He greeted her with a rather sweaty and slightly muddy kiss, but at least it left her feeling slightly less frozen.

"She's doing great." Octavia told him proudly. "She managed to get as far as working out that _the other team doesn't have a Bellamy_."

"Wow. I'm impressed, Princess. Here. I thought you looked a bit chilly." He held the bundle out to her and she discovered that it was, in fact, a hoodie.

"How did you know I was cold?" She asked, flummoxed to say the least. She thought she'd been hiding it quite well.

"I know you too well." He grinned at her affectionately. "It'll be way too big, but probably better than hypothermia."

"It's perfect." She told him, because it was, really. It was substantial and soft and it even smelled like him. Without hesitation, she slipped out of her coat and pulled it on over her knitwear, before redeploying her coat. "Thank you so much. You are a saviour." She pulled him into a hug.

"You're welcome. Enjoy another forty minutes of watching me be awesome." With that, he jogged back over to the changing room and left her feeling a little awestruck.

"I do love a good cliche." Emori commented.

"It was pretty sweet." Octavia agreed.

She ignored them both. She was too busy revelling in the feeling of being deliciously warm.

…...

It seemed that after the victorious conclusion of a rugby match it was necessary for people to sort of loiter and mingle for quite some time. It didn't seem that much was said at this point – there just seemed to be a lot of back-slapping and stereotypically masculine grunting. Eventually they took their leave of Bellamy's teammates and of Emori and began walking back towards the Blakes' house.

"So what's the plan for this afternoon, Bell?" Octavia asked with palpable excitement. "Can we watch movies all afternoon? And eat popcorn for tea?"

"The plan starts with lunch and with putting this in the laundry." He gestured at the kit he was still wearing.

"And then movies and popcorn?"

"I don't think we have popcorn, O. I'm sorry."

"Can we get popcorn?" She asked, looking somewhat downcast.

"I'm getting us popcorn." Clarke decided cheerfully. "As a thanks for inviting me over. There must be somewhere on the way that I can get popcorn."

"I like this one, Bell. You should keep her."

"That's the plan, O. That's the plan."

…...

She had absolutely no idea what to expect from staying over at Bellamy's. The only thing that was apparent to her was that they were also on Octavia-sitting duty, so probably there wouldn't be too much rampant mid-afternoon sex. That was a pity, she thought. That was the one thing about this whole _relationship_ business she felt reasonably confident at. Well, she was also reasonably confident about book chat, but she doubted that was quite what he'd had in mind for the whole time she was here. All the same, her backpack contained a rather dry biography of Julius Caesar nestled alongside her toothbrush. It never hurt to be prepared for anything.

In the end, she needn't have worried. It turned out that an afternoon and evening of eating food and watching movies with two people whose company she rather enjoyed was far from a hardship. And it certainly wasn't unpleasant to spend quite so much time wrapped in Bellamy's arms, to feel him press frequent kisses to her cheek or neck. She was still wearing the hoodie, too, even thought it wasn't strictly necessary while indoors. She had a feeling she'd be wearing that hoodie quite a lot in the near future.

After all, surely stealing his clothes with his permission was the perfect way of securing his attachment and, therefore, the success of the plan.

"I'm sorry this hasn't been the most exciting day." He whispered, interrupting her thoughts.

"It's been great." She found herself feeling the need to reassure him.

"It's kind of you to lie to protect my feelings."

"It really has been fun. I learnt a lot about rugby, and watched you being all manly and things."

"Manly and things. Wow."

"Just accept the compliment, Blake."

She gathered from the way that he started nuzzling into the back of her neck and kissing the spot under her ear that he'd decided to do just that.

"You two are gross." Octavia informed them cheerfully. "I'm going to bed. I do not want to watch you be gross."

"What happened to _sweet_?" Clarke asked with a raised brow as the other girl stood up and stretched. "We were definitely _sweet_ earlier."

"That was before my brother started to look at you like – like – you know what, I don't want to finish that sentence. I'm too young for this." She stuck her tongue out at them and Clarke found herself giggling rather excessively.

"Goodnight, Octavia."

"Night, O."

"Night, gross people."

She closed the door behind her, and Clarke listened out for the sound of her footsteps as she made her way up the stairs.

Octavia could only have been on the third step by the time Clarke felt Bellamy's lips crash against hers. And, sure, he was always quite an enthusiastic kisser, but this – this was something different. Her mouth was open before she'd quite worked out what was happening, and she seemed to be lying down on the sofa now, and he was hovering above her, his erection pressing against her thigh, and his hands were everywhere, roaming up her top over her breasts and down to her hip, and she wondered if maybe this was the kind of _passion_ that she'd read about in all those historical novels.

Then he let out an alarmingly loud groan.

"Bellamy?" She asked, finding all this rather flattering but not quite keeping up.

"Princess." He moaned against her ear and she found herself rather liking this, the way he seemed to be losing control. All the same, she wasn't sure this was quite the time or the place for it.

"Should we maybe – I mean – I don't want your sister to hear." He sat up a little at that, straddling her and looking down into her eyes with something that appeared a little too close to adoration for comfort.

"I want the _whole world_ to hear." He told her fiercely and, she thought, at least a little foolishly, but she supposed it wasn't the most senseless thing he'd done in the last three minutes. It was, at least, slightly more coherent than that _groan_. "I want everyone to know that you're perfect, and that you're _mine_. Seeing you wander around all day with my name written across your back has been sending me crazy."

She found herself a little startled at that, because she hadn't really _looked_ at the hoodie he'd presented her with earlier. Sure, she'd smelled it, and worn it, and become at least a little obsessed with it, but she hadn't realised that it had the potential to bring out his possessive side.

It wasn't a problem, she concluded rather quickly, unbuttoning his jeans and letting his erection spring free. It was, she decided resolutely as she took the length of him into her mouth and heard another one of those glorious groans, rather encouraging and pretty damn arousing to feel so wanted. And it certainly was only too easy to enjoy pleasuring him when he was tangling his hands in her hair and thrusting eagerly into her mouth.

And besides which, having him this obsessed with her – well, that could only be good for the plan.

…...

It wasn't until much later, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom as he fell asleep in her arms, that she found herself at leisure to reflect on his words about her being _perfect._ It had been tiptoeing around in the back of her mind, from the moment he'd first mentioned the idea, that this had the potential to be problematic because, actually, she wasn't perfect. Not at all. She had been faking everything during every second of their time together over the last couple of months, had never allowed herself to be only _herself_ , so it stood to reason that this perfect girlfriend he thought he had simply didn't exist.

And, well, she thought that had the potential to be a bit of an issue for the plan. But she thought it had the potential to be an issue for other reasons as well. Because as she stroked a finger over the sleep-relaxed face of this rather attractive and ridiculously caring and funny and intelligent fake boyfriend of hers, who had fallen asleep curled on her chest as if he trusted her to the moon and back, she couldn't help but think that, maybe, it might be nice if there were at least the possibility of this actually working out. Of making it _real._ Not that she definitely wanted that, of course – he had been a bully, she kept reminding herself, once upon a time, and what did they actually have in common except Maths and Chemistry and Scrubs and libraries and ice cream? - but, well, she thought it might have been nice to have the _option_. The possibility.

It might have been nice to think that Clarke Griffin could date Bellamy Blake for real.

But, obviously, that wasn't on the cards at all. Because this perfect girl he thought he was with, with whom he was so happy about being himself – she wasn't herself. And that was a pretty damn insurmountable problem.

She fell asleep eventually – how could she not, when she felt so comfortable and secure in his presence? - but the same thoughts continued to plague her in the days to come. She found herself second guessing almost every move she made in his presence, wondering whether she'd just done a _Clarke Griffin_ thing or a _perfect girlfriend_ thing, wondering whether he could see the real her peeping through. Thinking it was a shame that he was destined never to get to know the real her, when he'd been so keen on the fact that this perfect girlfriend of his liked the real him.

She became obsessed with wondering what was fake and what was real. When he ate her out in the middle of the afternoon, the following Thursday, having dragged her home to his bedroom on the way to the library because he simply had to _make her day –_ as if that was even vaguely normal behaviour - she wasted a frankly foolish amount of concentration on wondering whether she ought to scream his name because that might be what a perfect girlfriend would do, or whether it was OK just to moan a little like she actually felt the need to. As it was, in the end, she found herself enjoying it too much to think straight, and stuck with her instinctive moaning, and he certainly didn't seem to object to it. The following day, when they discussed whether they were doing Christmas presents, was something of a nightmare, because she was pretty sure that a perfect girlfriend should be trying to spoil him, but she just wanted to get him a good book. Books were their thing, after all.

And the worst thing of all, she found herself thinking as the holidays rolled around, was that she still didn't even regret the plan, however confused she was, however indecisive she was about what she might do. However disappointed she was that it could never be real, even if she wanted it to.

Because were it not for the plan, she'd never have got to know him at all, not really.


	12. Chapter 12

Of course, it didn't take long for Bellamy to realise that something was the matter. He was an annoyingly perceptive fake boyfriend, like that.

An annoyingly _perfect_ fake boyfriend, Clarke found herself thinking.

They were watching Scrubs one lazy afternoon early in the Christmas break, sitting curled together on his bed in the warm afterglow of sex, and she was looking forward to a couple of hours with nothing to do except enjoy his company and laugh at her favourite show. Then she felt his fingers sliding up her skirt, brushing her clit with the softest of touches, and she froze. She knew that was the wrong response. She knew that the perfect girlfriend was supposed to fall back against him and start moaning her appreciation. And, in general, she'd have found that only too easy to do. But they'd already spent half the afternoon screwing and, frankly, she just wanted to spend a bit of time with him. She was beginning to feel distinctly _pestered_.

The real Clarke, she thought, would probably just have slapped his hand away. The real Clarke was beginning to believe that, as great as sex with Bellamy was, sitting and talking over Scrubs with him was pretty awesome, too.

He picked up on her reaction right away, and his hand stilled.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I disagree." He told her with a gentle smile and withdrew his hand altogether. "You know you can tell me, whatever it is?"

"I just – I guess I'm not really in the mood. I'd quite like to just hang out with you, if that's OK."

"Of course. I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable." He apologised somewhat sheepishly. "Of course we can just hang out. You are allowed to say if you're not in the mood."

"I guess I was worried you'd be offended or annoyed or something. Or that you'd get bored of me if we don't have sex all the time."

"Definitely not a thing. Sex with you is pretty great, but it's far from the only reason I'm dating you." He took a deep breath, as if wondering whether his next words were wise. "Just be honest with me next time. Stop overthinking everything about this relationship."

"OK. It's just – yeah – it's a bit overwhelming at times."

"I get that. I guess I am a bit surprised though." He muttered, suddenly fascinated by tracing the patterns on his duvet cover with his fingers. "Mostly girls only seem to be interested in me for what goes on in the bedroom."

"Sex with you is pretty great, but it's far from the only reason I'm dating you." She repeated his words back at him with a gentle smile.

"You mean that?"

"Of course I do." She placed her hand over his on the duvet. "You're also probably the most caring person I've ever met, that counts in your favour. Also the book chat. And it turns out rugby is something of a turn-on."

"This is going to sound stupid." He told her, eyes still fixed on the duvet. "But – you make me feel like I actually matter as a person. Not as a brother or a team mate or for sex. But as _Bellamy_."

"That's because you do matter to me." She admitted in another one of those increasingly frequent moments of regrettable honesty. "You matter to me a lot."

…...

She took Bellamy's advice to heart and tried very hard not to overthink anything when she went shopping for his Christmas present the following day. She had decided to get him a book, because he liked books, and so she took herself off to the bookstore in town, anticipating that it might be quite a challenge to pick out the perfect present.

She needn't have worried. She saw the ideal gift right away, some guide to Roman architecture with a photo of columns on the cover, and took it to the checkout, and breathed a sigh of relief.

On the way home, she allowed herself to start overthinking things again, just a little. And she realised that there was something interesting going on here, because that book – well, it was what perfect girlfriend Clarke would have bought, of course, to perpetuate that in joke about _columns and shit_. But it was also, now she came to think about it, exactly what the real Clarke would buy for this boyfriend she was genuinely growing to care about, because she knew that he'd actually really enjoy reading it.

That thought, that sudden realisation that the perfect girlfriend and the real her did not have to disagree on everything, had her stopping rather abruptly in her tracks and staring at a lamppost for some moments, trying desperately to process this new idea.

And then she found herself wondering if, maybe, this phenomenon stretched beyond book shopping. Because, now she came to think of it, Bellamy _had_ seemed to think that her reaction to that seriously good oral the other day had been perfect. And those blow jobs he enjoyed so much, it was definitely the real Clarke giving those. And maybe it worked beyond the bedroom, too, she thought suddenly. After all, he did seem to think that their library dates were perfect, and the library really was one of her favourite places.

Maybe this wasn't so fake after all. Maybe she _could_ be the perfect girlfriend he thought he was dating.

Maybe she already was.

…...

That tide of optimism carried her towards Christmas in something of a cheerful daze. Not even the incessant series of cocktail dos and dinner parties to which her mother dragged her could dull her mood. It was Christmas Eve, now, and for the first time in her life, she was just a normal lovestruck teenage girl.

Well, a normal lovestruck teenage girl with ambitions to study medicine. And with an obsession with Art History. And with a neatly wrapped book on Roman architecture hidden under her bed. Maybe normality wasn't quite her thing after all.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a text from Bellamy.

_Happy Christmas Eve, Princess! Are you busy? Can I call you? Xxx_

That was mysterious, she thought. Speaking on the phone wasn't something they did much. All the same, she couldn't help noting that her heart beat just a little faster at the idea of hearing his voice, and before she'd had time to overthink it, she'd called him instead.

"Clarke?"

"Bellamy! Happy Christmas Eve!"

"You too. I guess I already said it, but -"

"Oh, shh. It was sweet. How was your day?"

"Pretty great, actually. I helped O decorate the tree. You?"

"Quiet. Only me and my mum and Marcus, just like it'll be tomorrow. No more Christmas parties, thank goodness."

"So about tomorrow. I was wondering, do you think you could sneak out for a bit? We could meet up and take a walk in the park or something?" It was, she thought, not a complicated or ground-breaking suggestion, but it might just have made her year all the same.

"I'd like that. I'd like that a lot. I'll bring your present."

"I hope you've remembered we're not doing big presents." He said, sounding, she thought, at least a little uncomfortable.

"It's not a big present. But I think you'll like it. I hope you will."

"Of course I will, Princess. It's from you." She giggled at that.

"Cheesy."

"Would it also be cheesy to tell you that seeing you will be the best Christmas present of all?"

"Yes. Yes it would. But I'll happily accept the compliment all the same."

He laughed at that, and asked after the book on Greek pottery that he had insisted she ought to borrow, and she began talking with some animation about the depiction of the human form, until he complained that he couldn't get a word in edgewise and turned the conversation back to the portrayal of heroes. And some time later, when midnight rolled around, ushering in Christmas Day, she was still on the phone to Bellamy.

…...

They met up at the park – or the collection of broken swings and dirty grass that passed for a park around here – and even though the earth was littered with crisp packets rather than snow she thought it might just have been the most romantic Christmas walk anyone could ever enjoy.

He greeted her by pressing his lips against hers, tangling his hands in her hair, kissing her until she decided that, perhaps, breathing was overrated anyway. Thankfully he seemed slightly more in control of his wits, and pulled away, and took her hand.

"Who's Marcus?" He asked abruptly. "You said he was at yours for Christmas and I've never heard of him. It feels like you know all about my family and I know nothing about yours."

That, she had to admit, was very true. The plan hadn't really involved telling him every detail of her home life.

"He's my mother's boyfriend." She watched her feet for a few moments, ostensibly to avoid stepping in some dog shit but really to avoid the subject. "I'm sorry that I don't talk about my family much. I'm not very close to my mother and my father's dead." She shrugged.

"Hey, it's OK. I didn't mean it as a criticism. It's just – it feels odd. Unbalanced, somehow."

"I'd like you to be able to meet my mother one day. Really I would. It's just – she has these stupid expectations and they don't involve boyfriends. Or at least, not boyfriends who live on the other side of town and don't intend to become doctors."

"I'd like you to be able to meet my mother, one day, too. But she's not home very much." Hmm. Yes. She'd noticed that.

She squeezed his hand and they walked in thoughtful silence for a while, until he steered them to a bench and gestured for her to take a seat.

"Would you like your present?" He asked with a grin.

"Sure." She removed his gift from her bag, too, and handed it out to him.

"You first." He insisted, giving her a parcel that looked, she noted, suspiciously like a book.

"Great minds think alike." She teased him as she started tearing at the paper to reveal a biography of Frida Kahlo. Most impressively of all, it was one she hadn't previously read.

"Thank you." She pressed a brief peck to his lips. "This is perfect. I love her work."

"I remembered. And – I don't know if you remember, but you were reading a book about her when we first started hanging out."

"Of course I remember. I'm secretly a sappy romantic. I remember everything about our pre-dating library dates." He kissed her at that, for quite a long time, and it was all rather lovely but she wanted him to get on with opening his gift. She wanted to see the look on his face when he realised how perfect it was, how perfect she was for choosing it.

How perfect they were, together.

"Open your present." She instructed him at last. "I want to know what you think of it."

"Demanding, Princess." All the same, he set about removing the paper, and chuckled as soon as he saw the image on the cover. "Columns and shit. My favourite. Thank you. This is perfect."

There was, she decided, only one good response to that. They sat on the bench and made out for quite some time, and in fact at one point she had to concede they were really more _lying_ on the bench. At last, though, the daylight began to fade and she knew she ought to get back and pretend interest in the turkey her mother was cooking.

"Thank you, Bellamy. This has been the best Christmas."

"Thank you yourself." He dropped another kiss onto her forehead and stood, offering his hand to help her up off the bench in turn.

They turned and began to walk back towards the gate, towards their families, and away from this perfect little world they had built for one short afternoon. And there was still no snow, Clarke noted, and the sky was still distinctly grey, and there was not a snowman nor a reindeer in sight.

But all the same, she came to an easy decision as they walked hand in hand, laughing at nothing and dodging the empty cans. If she were to design a perfect Christmas card to convey the joy of the season, this would be the picture she would paint.

…...

Clarke had not previously attended a New Year's Eve party, because she hadn't been on a quest for _fun_ this time last year. And she'd heard it said that New Year's Eve parties tended to be based on a particularly drunk and rowdy kind of fun, and that kissing people at midnight was apparently a big deal – hopefully that one would be straightforward enough, as long as she stuck close to Bellamy's side – so it was with no small amount of trepidation that she asked her mother if she could spend the night at Raven's.

"That sounds lovely, dear. Do you and your friend have any special plans to celebrate the New Year?"

She paused and wondered how honest to be. "Yes. She's holding a small party. But don't worry, mum, it won't be anything too wild. My friend who wants to design aeroplanes and the one who likes books will be there."

"That sounds fine, Clarke. Have a lovely time."

Permission duly secured – albeit permission to stay over at a house other than the one she actually intended to go to – she showed up at Bellamy's early in the afternoon of the day in question.

"Princess." He greeted her with his usual enthusiastic kiss. She wondered if, at this point, he was doing this more to irritate that particular nextdoor neighbour than anything else. Kissing her could hardly be a novelty, by now.

"Bellamy." She greeted him when he resurfaced for oxygen. "Can I come in, please? It's a bit chilly out here."

He chuckled at that and stepped back to welcome her into the house, and she made for the stairs, presuming that Scrubs was his intended form of entertainment until the time came to get ready for the party.

"Not yet, Princess." He reached out for her hand and started tugging her towards the kitchen instead. "We have other plans, today."

She couldn't quite fathom what all this might be about, so she followed him in some confusion. Things didn't get much better when they first arrived in the kitchen. There was a box of eggs lying out on the counter. Some flour, a tub of margarine, some sugar and cocoa powder. A bar of chocolate.

A pack of chocolate flakes.

All at once she felt the blood rush from her face. He had remembered? He had remembered the little chocolate cake with the flake that had started that ridiculous grudge and the even more ridiculous scheme that followed it? He was, she realised in that moment, a far greater young man than she had given him credit for.

Or perhaps, she panicked abruptly, this was all some sick joke, some elaborate way of showing her that he'd found out about the plan.

"Clarke?" He asked, sounding distinctly nervous. "I know it's not exactly Scrubs but... God, this is stupid. I just – do you remember that time when we were kids when I stole your lunch? And said all those awful things? And, well, I've never forgiven myself for that. For the look on your face when I was calling your names and throwing that damn chocolate cake in the bin. I'm so sorry, Clarke, for everything I did when we were younger. And I thought maybe I could make a start on putting that right. Maybe we could have a chocolate cake making date?"

She didn't have the words to respond to that. She thought, probably, she could live a hundred lives, practise _fun_ and _relationships_ until she was blue in the face and still not be able to form a coherent sentence that did justice to that remarkable apology.

So she kissed him, hard and fast, crushing her lips against his, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, aware all the while that this wasn't exactly a _romantic_ sort of a kiss. But it was raw, and honest, and _real,_ and everything that their relationship hadn't been, at the start.

Everything she realised, now, she wanted it to be.

This was, she decided abruptly as his mouth responded to hers and his teeth nipped at her lower lip, the end of the road for the plan. And good riddance to it. Good riddance to that awful bully and that vengeful grudge-holder. They had a glorious future ahead of them, and it would begin here, today, with chocolate cake and kissing to welcome in the new year.

"Thank you." She said at last, when she pulled away, struggling to speak as she panted for breath and fought the lump in her throat. "This is the kindest gesture and – I've forgiven you. Completely. You need to know that. I'm sorry for all the times I made things difficult between us, too."

"Pretty sure you did nothing wrong." He told her with forced lightness. "Perfect Princess."

If only he knew.

This was not the time, however, for dwelling on what she could no longer change. She picked up a spatula and got to work.

They could have been good at making cupcakes, she thought, were they not so damn distracted all the time. Every time she was trying to weigh something out he decided to divert her attention with a kiss. Whenever he bent over to check in the oven she simply had to give his butt a squeeze. And the moment he dobbed a smudge of cake batter on her nose – well, that was game on.

It was a miracle, she thought, that any baking got done at all.

And it was even more of a miracle that, when Aurora Blake walked into the kitchen, she didn't immediately throw her son's girlfriend from the house. No sooner had Clarke heard the tap of heeled shoes along the corridor than she looked up to see a rather stunning woman in a sleek purple dress enter the room.

She understood, now, where these two Blake siblings got their good looks.

"Mum." Bellamy greeted her, apparently completely unfazed by her sudden arrival.

"You must be Clarke." The woman exclaimed, and she found herself being hugged rather enthusiastically. Wholehearted hugs were clearly another thing that ran in this family.

"Hello." She rubbed self-consciously at her nose, trying to remove any traces of cake batter. "I'm so sorry about your kitchen, Ms. Blake. We'll clean it up, I promise."

She threw back her head and laughed. "Oh, Clarke, honey. You can definitely call me Aurora. And you can make as much mess in this kitchen as you like. As long as Bellamy keeps going on about how happy you make him, you can do no wrong."

"Thank you, I think?"

"You're so welcome, Clarke. It's so good to finally meet you."

"It's great to meet you, too."

"Well, carry on having fun. I'm heading out. Make sure O gets something to eat, will you?"

"We will." Clarke confirmed, then realised that question was probably directed at Bellamy.

Aurora was looking at her thoughtfully. "He was right. You're a sweetheart."

"Will you be home tonight, Mum?" Bellamy asked in a careful tone.

"No." Her eyes flickered to Clarke briefly before she spoke again. "I'll be fine, Bellamy. It's only Graco. You don't need to worry."

"You don't need to go." He muttered. "We'd manage, you know we would -"

"Bellamy. We're not having this conversation now. I'll be home tomorrow, look after your sister." He was still frowning and Clarke wondered whether, perhaps, this might be a good moment to reach out and take his hand. Before she could, however, Aurora had pulled him into a hug and was murmuring something to him that she couldn't hear.

With a last smile at Clarke, she was gone.

"You OK?" Clarke asked Bellamy gently, curling an arm round his waist.

"Yeah." He shook himself slightly and then looked down into her eyes. "Come on, let's get the cupcakes out of the oven before they burn."

She rather thought that was it, then, for the subject of his mother, but as ever he surprised her. Some time later, when both their hands and eyes were occupied with attempting to coat cakes in chocolate and distribute flakes effectively, he started to let it all out.

"So my mum makes dresses for a living. In that warehouse on the edge of town. It's disgusting, and they pay next to nothing, and then sell everything for huge amounts of money to gullible idiots who are prepared to spend more because it's not made in some sweatshop in Asia. I'm telling you, though, that place isn't much better. " He sounded angry about it, but she resisted the urge to reach out to him and risk interrupting his rant. She knew he needed to get this off his chest, and he knew that he'd find it easier if she didn't remind him she was there just yet. "And she always swore we'd have a good life, that she'd provide well for us even though she's a single parent. That I'd have my rugby boots, and she'd spoil O as much as she could afford. And, like I said, her job pays next to nothing so – so she has another one. She works as an escort at weekends, some evenings. Octavia doesn't really know – or she knows, but we don't _tell_ her anything, if that makes sense. If one of her clients gives her a rough time we try to hide it from her. And I'm not telling you this because I want sympathy, for us or for our mother. I'm telling you because – because you're you. Because even though I spent a decade thinking you were a spoilt princess with a perfect life, I think you'll understand."

She abandoned her chocolate and wrapped him in a fierce hug while she wondered what to say.

"I'm not sure whether I understand. But I do know she seems like an awesome mother who cares about you both a lot."

"Yeah. Yeah, she does."

"Well then. There we go."

"You don't seem shocked."

"I don't think there's anything very shocking about her wanting you and Octavia to have the best possible life. And I wasn't that surprised, really. You'd already given me quite a lot of the pieces of the puzzle."

"Can we get back on with making a mess of the kitchen now?" He asked, looking a bit vulnerable as he stared determinedly at a misshapen cupcake.

"Yes. That sounds like a plan."

They spent the rest of the afternoon cheerfully coating every available worktop in chocolate, and then cleaning it off again just as cheerfully, and at one point she said that she thought this probably counted as _too much chocolate_ and he laughed and kissed her soundly on the lips.

"I still think that was probably the best first date anyone has ever had."

"I thought that, too, actually."

"Great minds think alike."


	13. Chapter 13

Clarke didn't look back, after that. She looked only forwards, to a bright future in which there was not so much as a speck of a revenge scheme on the horizon. She looked forwards with a certain amount of determination, because she couldn't quite bear to look back at the idiot she had been. And if, she thought, she didn't look too hard at the plan she had left behind her, well then, maybe she might be able to convince herself that it had never really been there at all.

Bellamy was certainly none the wiser, and their relationship was blossoming into the kind of bliss she had never even allowed herself to daydream about. Kissing to greet the new year, libraries and ice cream, sex that left her gasping for more – these were all things that she had thought happened to other people. And now that they were happening to her, she intended to enjoy them for all she was worth.

And enjoy them she did. She enjoyed the last few days of the holiday, as they strolled hand in hand about the town with no particular destination in mind but happiness. She enjoyed returning to lessons with the young man who had also become, in so many ways, her closest friend, almost permanently glued to her side. And she enjoyed most of all the knowledge that, it turned out, he thought the _real_ Clarke was at least as perfect as he had thought that fake girlfriend had been, in the beginning.

She nearly told him all this, once. In fact, she nearly told him something much worse, much more frightening for a two-month-old teenage relationship with her former arch nemesis. She was getting quite confident in the art of sucking him off, these days, and on this particular occasion the salty taste of his happiness in her mouth was accompanied by him groaning her name in a most complimentary way. And then he pulled her away from his cock and into his arms, and they fell back onto the bed, and he started whispering into her hair about how amazing she was.

"I take it you enjoyed that?" She asked with a grin.

"Just a little." He agreed with a laugh that died the moment he met her gaze. And she was trying not to look at him with her heart in her eyes, really she was, but it was growing increasingly challenging and she knew that, on this occasion, she'd allowed him to see a little too much.

"You OK?" She asked lightly, hoping to move the conversation back to the safer ground of sexual teasing.

"Yeah. I just – I really like you, you know that?" She shivered slightly at his words, because she couldn't help but feel there was a bit more going on here than that.

She could feel the response she wanted so badly to make, burning on her tongue, in danger of spilling over, in danger of making her vulnerable before him.

"I – I really like you too."

She wasn't sure whether the slump of her shoulders on hearing her own words was caused more by relief or by disappointment.

…...

Clarke had been avoiding Raven and difficult conversations and also the _truth_ so successfully and for so long now that it took her by surprise when her best friend finally did manage to corner her.

They'd spoken, of course, because they saw each other rather often, and she'd even asked more than once how it was going with Bellamy, with a kind of pointed flex of her eyebrow that indicated that Clarke knew _exactly_ what she was really asking, but it wasn't until one Friday morning in the new year found the two of them alone in the common room, with no sign of anyone else showing up insanely early to interrupt them, that Raven seemed to decide the coast was clear for her to raise the topic openly.

"So you and Bellamy are still together, I notice."

"Yes." She agreed briskly, hoping to convey that the topic was closed.

"Must be getting on for a couple of months now."

"Uhuh."

"Getting cold feet by any chance, Clarke?"

"I don't know what you mean." She lied through her teeth.

"Well, if you were going to go through with that ridiculous lunch revenge plan of yours, I'd say there would be no moment like the present."

"Keep your voice down, for heaven's sake!" She couldn't help the way her eyes darted to the door.

"Oh, don't worry, there's no one here to report back and spoil your fun." Her friend waved a dismissive hand that made her, somehow, even more keen to throttle her.

"It's not like that, Raven."

"Isn't it? I did wonder. Because, really, if you were going to go ahead with making a big humiliating scene about dumping him, well, I'd have thought you'd have done that by now. I mean, you've got him practically eating out of your hand, there certainly isn't any benefit to dating him any longer. Unless, of course -"

She was interrupted by Bellamy storming into the common room. Clarke decided at that moment that, if there was a God, he or she had a very twisted sense of humour.

"Is this true, Clarke?" He bit out, looking rather frightening and not at all like the young man she was falling in love with. "This was all some fucking scheme to humiliate me? Some sick plan to get _revenge_?"

She paused a moment too long before replying, and he read his answer in that.

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"Not entirely."

"Not entirely. Not _entirely_ right that our entire relationship was a fucking lie? Screw you, Clarke. Screw you." He stormed out of the room and was about twenty metres down the corridor by the time she gathered her wits sufficiently to follow.

"Bellamy, wait! Let me explain -"

"Fuck off, Clarke. You have nothing to say to me." He continued to march away from her.

That was the point where she started crying, rather loudly actually, and found herself sitting in a small heap in the middle of the corridor. Raven soon caught up to her there, and wrapped her arms around her, and whispered broadly reassuring things at her.

"I'm going to go after him, Clarke." Her friend decided after a couple of minutes when her sobs had quietened to whimpers. "Maybe he'll hear me out. I know what you were trying to tell me, that it was real, and hopefully I can convince him of that. I'm so sorry I pushed you and now I've screwed everything up."

"It's not your fault." She sniffled rather pathetically. "I'm the one who lied to him for months."

"I'm going to go see if I can fix this, Clarke. It'll be OK."

As it turned out, Raven's optimism was misplaced. She returned barely ten minutes later with a downcast expression.

"Clarke -"

"Don't worry. I know you tried."

"He just won't listen to reason. He's clearly really upset – I'm pretty sure he'd been crying, actually. Hopefully that's a good sign, if he's that upset that shows that he really likes you so maybe you'll be able to fix it once he's calmed down?"

"Or maybe it just means he feels even more betrayed." She thought she was more likely to be correct on this one. She did know him rather better than Raven did, after all.

If Raven had been right about his emotional state, there was absolutely no sign of it by the time they all arrived for Maths first period. On the contrary, as he reclaimed the seat on the far side of the room, the very same one that he had abandoned to sit by her back when they got together, his face was absolutely devoid of signs of any feeling whatsoever.

And then, of course, it came to pass that Mrs Kane demanded she hand in her homework, and it turned out that, with all the drama of the morning, she had left it behind in her locker.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Kane. Really I am, but it's still in my locker. I can bring it over at break?"

"I'm not entirely sure I believe you, Ms. Griffin. That sounds like something you would say if you hadn't done your homework."

"No, really, I have done it. It's in my locker -"

"Honesty's not your strong suit, is it, Princess?" Bellamy heckled her from across the room and she felt tears sting her eyes.

"I'm telling the truth." She insisted ineffectually, while he muttered something that sounded less than complimentary under his breath.

Emori arrived late right into the middle of this and took in the scene with a mix of confusion and horror.

"What on Earth is going on?" She hissed to Clarke and Raven as she took a seat.

"They broke up." Raven stated simply, and Clarke was grateful for her friend's concise honesty. "As you may have guessed, it wasn't pretty."

Emori, of course, engulfed Clarke in a hug and started whispering things about how she was so sorry and they'd seemed so perfect and maybe it would all turn out OK in the end. She supposed it was supposed to be comforting, but all this kindness at a time when she was already cursing herself just made her feel even more awful.

…...

That first Maths lesson set the tone for the weeks that followed, unfortunately.

She made a brief attempt to apologise on Monday, but all she got for her trouble was a _please, don't pretend, I know you're only here because Miller sent you_ before he walked away. That was a bit unhelpful, really, because Miller hadn't _sent_ her, he'd just pointed out that Bellamy was pretty upset and she might want to take her chance with an apology.

Her day deteriorated further when Octavia actually _slapped_ her in the middle of a crowded corridor on the way between lessons. She spat a load of vitriol about _how dare you break his heart_ and walked away before Clarke had chance to explain a thing. Her cheek was smarting for the rest of the day, but her heart was hurting rather more, she thought.

On Tuesday, he cut her Art History essay, on which she had spent _six hours_ that weekend – although, to be fair, she'd largely done so because her brain was too full of fluff to complete the task with her usual efficiency – into confetti and scattered it over the rest of the contents of her locker.

On Wednesday, he poured what appeared to be most of a can of coke over her with a _watch where the fuck you're going, Princess_ , and she found herself snapping back that it was _unoriginal, Blake_ because, in fact, he had poured coke over her shortly after they'd first started speaking last autumn.

On Thursday, he didn't show up to the library. And of course she had known he wouldn't, because she wasn't an idiot, and she knew that he was done with her, but it wasn't until she walked through those double doors and saw him _not_ standing there that it really hit home. She cried a lot that afternoon. So much so, in fact, that her mother noticed her red-rimmed eyes when she arrived home and asked her what on Earth was the matter.

"Everything." She replied melodramatically, but also somewhat accurately.

"Clarke, honey, what's going on?" In an unusual moment of motherly sensitivity, she led her daughter to the sofa, abandoning the supper she had been attempting to cook, and encouraged her to sit by her side.

She didn't really know where to start, because talking to her mother about all this seemed a bit much. On the other hand, she had asked, and it wasn't like she had anyone else to cry on at this moment in time. Perhaps she could give it a go, and see how it went.

"I screwed up." She offered cautiously. "I did something awful. And now everyone hates me." She offered in between sobs.

"Oh, honey, I don't think _everyone_ can possibly hate you." To be fair, that was true. But _he_ hated her, and he was basically everyone, in her world at least. "Clarke, baby, I know we don't spend a lot of time having mother-daughter chats, because you're far too independent to want them most of the time, but I'd love to listen to what's bothering you if you'll let me? You've seemed low all week, and that surprised me, because you'd been so happy and spending so much time with all these new friends of yours." She started a little at her mother's unexpectedly accurate observation and decided she was going to give her a chance.

"Bellamy broke up with me." She babbled in a rush, then realised that had been a very poor place to start because it would leave her mother with more questions than answers.

"Bellamy? The boy you had that grudge against when you were younger? I didn't know you were dating him." She commented in a careful tone.

"I was." She sobbed twice at her use of the past tense. "It turned out he liked the library." That wasn't even half of an explanation, but suddenly her mother was nodding in understanding.

"I see."

"And it was wonderful and he was _so lovely_ and also I made some great friends along the way and everything was _perfect_. Except that I was lying to him and then he found out and now he _hates_ me and I suppose I've lost all of my new friends too."

"Lying to him?"

"I don't think I can tell you all about that bit, mum. I... don't think you'd look at me the same if I did. I've been an idiot, and I know it, and I'm going to do better now. Only doing better won't do me much good if he never forgives me."

"He might not forgive you, if you've really hurt him, Clarke, that's true. I'm not saying that to upset you, but because it's the truth. But if you can do better, and never treat anyone else like that again, then you'll have learnt something and grown up at least a little bit, and that's better than nothing."

"I guess." She hiccuped slightly. It was, she supposed, better than nothing, but it still sounded a lot _worse_ than happily ever after.

"And I suspect that if all of your new friends see you doing better and showing him and them how sorry you are, they'll come around."

"You think so?"

"I suspect they'll find it a lot easier than he will."

"I just miss him."

"I know, honey, I know. And it's OK to be upset about this. It's totally normal to grieve for the end of a relationship."

"Why didn't I talk to you about this before?"

"Because you're a teenage girl, and having secret boyfriends and screwing up and learning from your mistakes and hiding them from your parents are all rights of passage. And because I'm not the world's greatest mother."

"You've been awesome tonight, mum. Thanks."

…...

Inspired by her mum's suggestion that she just had to show everyone she was going to do better, she cornered him in the common room before Maths the following morning, one week to the moment since everything had gone so terribly wrong.

"Bellamy, I wanted to say how sorry I am."

"I don't want to hear it, Clarke. I don't want to hear that you're _sorry_ for deliberately misleading me and stringing me along for weeks, because I'm not really sure that _sorry_ could possibly be enough to make up for that."

He was partly right, she thought. Saying sorry once was not going to be enough for this. She was going to have to _show_ him she was sorry, and try saying it again another time when he was a bit calmer.

She wasn't going to give up on this challenge.

In the spirit of showing him she was sorry, she didn't fling insults back at him in return over the following week. She made a point of being as polite as possible whenever they were forced to interact in a classroom or in a corridor. And she made a particularly big effort to carry on speaking normally to his friends, asking Mbege about rugby and Miller whether he was looking forward to his next weekend away with the cadets. She forced herself to carry on sitting with the group in the common room or even at lunch, and found herself beyond grateful for Emori and Raven's quiet support in maintaining business as usual. When anyone asked the group at large for help with their homework, even if it was Bellamy himself, she was the first to volunteer.

But none of it stemmed the flow of vitriol that Bellamy directed at her at every opportunity.


	14. Chapter 14

A couple of weeks passed with no great progress, and Clarke had to admit her resolve was beginning to waver. It wasn't easy, she noticed rather quickly, to bend over backwards to look apologetic to someone who was dead set on making her school day a living hell. And she found herself wondering, in the occasional moment of weakness, if perhaps this might all be a bit of a waste of time. If he was this determined to make her life a misery, this set on holding a grudge, then maybe he wasn't worth all of this effort she was putting into trying to earn his forgiveness.

Then she remembered that, in fact, she had held a grudge for over a decade and put really quite a lot of effort into making his life a misery. Quite a lot _more_ effort, in fact, than the odd stray can of coke.

She was surprised, one chilly Wednesday, to find John Murphy waiting by her locker when she arrived at school.

"Hi, John." She greeted him neutrally. She'd spoken to him a lot, in recent months, or at least a lot more than she ever would have predicted before Bellamy became such a feature of her existence, but always as part of a group or at least with Emori around. She wasn't sure what she made of his sudden appearance _alone_.

"Clarke. Hi. Look, you have to talk to Bellamy. _Please_. He's driving us all nuts and, to be honest, I'm also pretty worried about him."

"Do you think I haven't tried, Murphy?" She snapped, aware she probably shouldn't be taking this out on him. "He won't hear me out. Believe me, I have tried."

He sighed heavily. "I thought you probably had, and Miller was sure you had, but we reckoned it was worth another go. We don't know what else to do." He shrugged helplessly, and she thought she had probably never seen John Murphy at a complete loss before.

"I guess just keep being his friends?" She suggested, making a concerted effort to ignore the fact that she was welling up. "I will try again, of course I will, but... I screwed up pretty badly, John. He's not just going to forgive and forget."

"Don't give up on him, Clarke. I'm telling you, he cares – or cared – about you a lot. And it's obvious that you still care about him. I'm rooting for you."

"Thanks. I never thought -"

She was interrupted by Bellamy walking in and looking at the two of them with a rather fierce expression.

"What the fuck are you doing talking to _her_ , Murphy? Princess Griffin's hardly worth your time."

"She happens to be my _friend_ , Bellamy."

"We were discussing Maths homework." She babbled, desperate for an excuse so that he wouldn't suspect they'd been talking about him. "Emori sent John with a message about Maths homework."

"You've told better lies, Princess." He hissed at her, and she could feel the anger rolling off him in almost physical waves before Murphy stepped into the space between them.

"Bellamy. Stop. I don't know what could possibly have gone wrong between the two of you, but you're being an idiot. Dating Clarke, it was literally the happiest you've ever been and, yes, sure, she _betrayed_ you in some massive melodramatic way you won't even talk about but is that really worth throwing her away for?"

He said nothing, face set like stone.

"Well, then, at the very least you could be civil. She's one of Emori's best friends. And yes, actually, she's my friend too, and I'm starting to feel a bit protective here. Because, to be honest, you're being a dick."

He didn't take the piss out of her after that. He said nothing to her at all.

And that was difficult, because over the duration of their relationship their friendship groups had merged somewhat, and it was something of a challenge to continue business as normal with everyone else while he looked on with a face like thunder. The contrast between the way she was being treated by his friends and the way he wouldn't give her the time of day hurt more than anything. She would be greeted by Murphy with a smirk and a _hey Griffin_ while Bellamy turned his head away from her. Miller would ask after her weekend while the guy she used to spend her weekends with stared idly out of the window. On one particularly unexpected occasion, she found herself volunteering to proofread Mbege's PE homework while her ex-boyfriend stood over them both scowling.

It was, she found, all rather _challenging_. But then, she had told herself she wouldn't back down from this challenge, and she intended to keep her word.

…...

She had reckoned without Bellamy's utter determination to wreak his revenge, in turn, for all the effort she had put in to avenging that stupid damn lunch. She had reckoned without his willingness to put actual time and effort into damaging her belongings, and reckoned without his boldness in catcalling her in front of the entire lunch hall.

She had certainly reckoned without him stooping to trying to make her jealous.

Of course, the girls had begun to circle almost the moment they had broken up. This was no surprise – he was attractive, sure, but he also came with a certain amount of social prominence that, undoubtedly, the Brees and Romas of this world were only too keen to make the most of. She found herself thinking sadly that, probably, it was only what she should have expected. He'd spent a couple of months with her, she who was something of an outlier when it came to the sort of girls Bellamy Blake ought to be screwing, and now he was going back to his normal type. The leggy, charismatic, beautiful type.

One thing she did not expect, though, was for him to develop a sudden interest in _Raven_.

It wasn't that Raven was unattractive, of course. She was absolutely wonderful – and to be honest, if their circumstances had been different, well, Clarke might easily have been interested in Raven herself. But between the fact that Raven was still vaguely seeing Wick and was also, in fact, a decent friend, it seemed likely that Bellamy wouldn't get very far. And besides which, she thought angrily, they just weren't a very good match. Raven was all stubbornness and sharp edges, and that, combined with Bellamy's slightly volatile emotional side – well, it wouldn't be pretty. He needed someone a little calmer and steadier and _softer_ to balance him out.

Someone like her.

She shook that thought from her mind and got back to working on the challenge of not crying at the sight of him attempting to make headway with Raven. This was, she thought, possibly the most unpleasant chemistry lesson of her life. Pike had, once again, decreed that they absolutely must work in pairs, and of course she couldn't pair up with Bellamy, these days, and before she knew quite what had happened he had latched himself onto Raven declaring that all the best lab partners were _both cute and clever_.

Her friend had looked a little bemused, but had evidently seen no real reason to object. After all, they had both been hanging out with the same group for several months, now. So it was that Clarke watched as she got on with collecting a Leibig condenser under an increasingly tactless stream of seemingly random compliments.

Clarke rather wondered what was wrong with him, actually. His flirting game wasn't usually so clumsy. So far he'd covered everything from her hairstyle to her sense of humour and was showing no signs of letting up, and Clarke rather suspected the fact that she was within earshot was a contributing factor here.

"So... Any plans for the weekend?" He was asking now as he watched his partner do all the work. "A girl like you must have a date."

"Yes." Raven snapped, and Clarke couldn't help but cheer a little internally at the sight of her friend finally cracking. "I do have a date. You'd probably have noticed I was seeing someone if you'd been a bit less self-obsessed of late. Now stop trying to upset Clarke and set up the fucking condenser."

"I'm not -"

"Don't give me that bullshit. You couldn't be less interested in me if you tried. In case you don't remember, Blake, you did actually screw me once. And promptly forgot all about it. So don't try to tell me there's anything else going on here than you trying to make my friend jealous."

"Please, as if I would bother. She's not worth my time."

That was, she thought, not his most cutting insult of all time. And, actually, he didn't say anything else stupid to Raven for the remainder of the lesson. Perhaps, she found herself wondering cynically, things were looking up. After all, they could hardly get much worse.

…...

Her mother hadn't suddenly become the sort of parent who pried into her daughter's thoughts at every moment of the day and night after their conversation a couple of weeks ago, but she seemed to be watching her more closely, Clarke thought.

"How are you doing, honey?" She asked over the dinner table one evening, and somehow Clarke knew she wasn't asking about her workload.

"I don't know." She shook her head, as if doing so could make all this go away.

"Everything's still a bit of a mess, I take it?"

"I think it's a bit more of an _organised_ mess now, if that makes sense? He's set some ground rules. Chief among them is that we don't speak to each other."

"I'm so sorry, Clarke."

"I'm working on it. I'm showing him I'm doing better. And my friends have all been amazing, loads who were his friends first are still talking to me."

"That's something, at least."

"Yeah. A boy I used to hate told me he was rooting for me." She couldn't resist the grin that broke out over her face at the thought. There were, perhaps, some causes for hope after all.

"I'm rooting for you too, honey. I'll always root for you, whether it's a teenage relationship or the job of your dreams. You know that, right?"

"Yes, mum. I do. Thanks."

…...

In the spirit of _doing better_ , and of doing everything she could to show that she was doing better, she went to look for Octavia a couple of days later. Her former friend hadn't actually hit her since that first week, and she supposed that was something, but she was growing fed up of being on the receiving end of so many frosty glares and harsh whispers from Bellamy's little sister and her extensive circle of friends.

"Octavia?" She greeted her with no small amount of trepidation as she approached the girl at her locker.

"Clarke?" She asked coldly. "What the hell do you want?"

"I wanted to talk about... what happened with me and your brother." She started to struggle through her carefully prepared words. "And I wanted to say how sorry I am for it, and how sorry I am that it's affected my friendship with you."

"I just don't understand it, Clarke. Why on Earth would you break up with him like that? You seemed so happy, and he's completely devastated."

"I didn't, Octavia."

"What?"

"I didn't break up with him, technically. He broke up with me."

"No." She shook her head firmly. "That can't be right. He would never have done that."

"He did, Octavia. Because I did something so horrible that he thought he didn't have a choice. I really screwed up."

"What did you do?"

"I came here to tell you. Because if he won't even talk to me for me to tell him the truth, I at least wanted to be honest with you." She paused and swallowed slowly, trying to postpone the moment when her former friend's eyes would grow cold. "But I suspect we won't be on good terms once I'm done."

"For goodness sake, Clarke. It can't have been that bad."

"When I started out trying to get to know him and trying to get together with him I was faking it to get revenge." She got out in a rush.

"For all those years he bullied you?"

"Yes. But mainly for the packed lunch he started with."

"Oh, Clarke. He told me that he'd been a bit of an arse when you were younger, but – really?"

"Yeah. I fucked up."

"When you started out, you said?"

"Yeah. I fell for him before I could go through with it. To be honest, I fell for him much earlier on than I was willing to admit to myself." She muttered quietly, eyes on her shoes.

"Well, obviously. You're not that good of an actor. No offence."

"None taken."

"Have you told him you're sorry?"

"I've tried. He doesn't want to hear it."

"Keep trying. He's a mess, Clarke. I'm worried about him. I might not like that you ever wanted to hurt him, or that you hid all this from him, but you were good for him. And you obviously are sorry. I'll put in a good word for you."

"Thanks."

"Hey, I'm doing this for him, not for you." Clarke found that, somehow, that was the thing that hurt the most. That all these people who were _rooting for her_ were doing so out of concern for him, rather than affection for her. Clearly, Octavia did not miss her reaction as she gave a sigh and held out her hand. "Look, give me your phone. It's about time we swapped numbers, don't you think?"

She brightened a little at that tentative olive branch and handed over the item in question. "Here."

Octavia entered her number and handed it back. "Don't be a stranger, Clarke. And good luck."


	15. Chapter 15

Clarke hadn't really had a social life since she broke up with Bellamy.

 _Broke up?_ Who was she kidding?

She hadn't really had a social life since Bellamy unceremoniously dumped her. Because, really, it didn't seem that going to a party was likely to be a lot of fun without him by her side. But also because she had to admit that the stream of invitations had run pretty dry in the first few weeks after he ended things, and it had taken a while for the message that she was still friends with his friends to get around. People were starting to reach out to her again, now, to decide that they were still on socialising terms, but all the same she found that she wasn't interested. An evening of drinking warm beer and watching her ex-boyfriend pick up other girls did not sound like her idea of a good time.

So it was that, when Stirling appeared by her side in the common room one day and stammered his way through an invitation to a party at his the following Saturday, she found it only too easy to gracefully decline. He made a point of assuring her many times that she genuinely was welcome, and that she really should consider herself part of the _crew_ , but she suspected that there were certain people who would gladly toss her metaphorically overboard if she did make an appearance.

Besides which, of course, she needed to study. Med school was calling her. She couldn't sit around drinking and moping over Bellamy at every hour of the day and night.

It was easy, therefore, to decline the invitation. It was much harder to convince her well-intentioned friends that she had no interest either in going to the party or in learning who had got off with whom at the party or, indeed, in absolutely anything else that went down at the goddamn party.

But in true Raven and Emori fashion, her two best friends tackled the issue with something of a pincer movement in Chemistry the Monday after the Saturday before.

"I know you said you didn't want to know anything about Stirling's the other night -" Raven began.

"So you've decided to ignore my wishes and tell me anyway?" She snapped.

"No, Clarke. We just – we decided, as your friends," she indicated herself and Emori, "that you need to know that you're clearly still very much on his mind."

"He obviously misses you." Emori added softly, and she noted that she had clearly become sufficiently pathetic that her friends couldn't even face saying Bellamy's name in her presence.

"Well that's fantastic news. Maybe tomorrow he'll actually _speak to me_ and we can all live happily ever after." She hissed with venom.

"Clarke..." Raven started speaking, but evidently had no clue what to say.

"I just miss him." She ground out bitterly, dashing away the tears that seemed to have started leaking from her eyes. She couldn't break down here, dammit. Weeping over Bellamy Blake in the middle of a chemistry lab was not one of her life goals.

"What's going on?" Jasper, clueless as ever, asked from the other side of Emori. "Why are people crying?"

"Clarke misses Bellamy." Monty informed him at a predictably inappropriate volume and she felt her blood run cold.

In a panic, she looked up, because from his seat on the other side of the room Bellamy would _definitely_ have heard that, and she expected to find him staring at her with judgement or anger or even some kind of sarcastic _pity_.

The truth was worse, as it turned out. His eyes grazed straight past her as if she wasn't even there.

…...

That stirred something in her, somehow. She wasn't quite sure whether it was the idea that he missed her, that they might both be suffering, that maybe Raven and Emori's words held some truth. Or maybe it was the pain of watching him look straight past her as if invisible, as if determined to prove her friends wrong. But something about that morning stung her into action and had her convinced that it was time to make another attempt at apologising.

She strengthened her resolve and marched up to his locker before lessons the following day. She'd prepared something of a script, and carefully schooled her facial expression, and she was as ready as she would ever be to face whatever this conversation threw at her.

"Bellamy." She began, and he said nothing at all, because that was, it seemed, what he did now. "I know that it's much too little too late, but I am sorry. Really. I should never have set out to hurt you. And it wasn't all a lie, not at all. I... realised pretty early on that I was in too deep. That I'd fallen for you, for real."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" He spat straight back at her, showing little regard for the optimistic script she held in her head. "That it wasn't _all_ a lie? That when I told you about my mum you weren't _entirely_ pretending to give a fuck?"

"That bit wasn't a lie, Bellamy. None of the... important bits were a lie. I promise. I care about you, really." She paused, sort of hoping he might say something, but of course, he didn't. "I miss you." She told him, rather hating how pathetic her voice sounded even to her own ears.

"Are you done now?" He asked, not meeting her eyes, and without waiting for a response he stormed from the room.

This was, she noted absently as she dissolved into tears in front of a decent sized audience of curious gossips, what failure felt like. And perhaps - at risk of being melodramatic - perhaps also heartbreak.

…...

She gave up on him, in the days that followed, at least a little bit. Not that he showed any sign at all of noticing, of course. And she gave up on Emori and Raven a bit, too, because they had been so sure that he missed her and still thought of her, but she reckoned she had pretty good evidence to the contrary, now. It was, she thought, scarcely possible to look any less interested in an apology than he had looked that day.

The worst thing of all was that, somehow, this all led to a certain amount of giving up on her schoolwork. This wasn't intentional, of course, because her future was of far more importance than a bit of relationship drama, but it seemed that being emotionally exhausted and avoiding human interaction and tearing up at random moments were not particularly conducive to producing outstanding academic performances.

So it was that Friday rolled around, and Maths was first period, and she had not finished her Maths homework. She supposed that the Clarke of old would have had sufficient energy to be worried about this, anxious at what Mrs Kane might say, but this week's Clarke was only incredibly frustrated.

She stumbled into the common room, eyes on the clock, and determined that she had, perhaps, if she was lucky, just enough time to barely finish the missing work. That was, of course, if her brain was willing to cooperate this morning any better than it had been the previous night. She grabbed her books and made for the corner where her friends were congregating, but rather than taking a seat on the sofa and joining the chat she chose a nearby table and got to work.

"What's that, Clarke?" Raven asked from her seat. "Last minute homework?"

"Yeah." She grunted, eyes on the task before her. "I just – yeah. Last minute homework. Maths."

She used to be more coherent, she thought, before Bellamy Blake had walked into her life. Well, before he'd walked back out of it again, at any rate.

"Where are you up to?" That was Emori's concerned voice.

"Just question seven left." She tried very hard not to fall apart as she admitted her failure. "But I couldn't do it last night, so – yeah."

She was half expecting someone to volunteer to help, of course. After all, Raven and Emori were both helpful and competent mathematicians. She just wasn't expecting the person who helped to be _him_.

"Pi over two." The voice was undoubtedly Bellamy's, and she jumped a little and looked up at him in surprise.

"Sorry?" She asked on reflex. She must have imagined it, there was no way he could have -

"Pi over two. I found it helped to sketch it out." He shrugged, and turned back to talking to Mbege, no doubt about sport or beer or suchlike.

Well then. She picked up a pencil, and sketched it out, and sure enough, it _did_ help. But that wasn't the most helpful thing here, not by any stretch of the imagination. No, she decided brightly. The most helpful thing here was, in fact, the knowledge that she had evidently not failed so badly after all.


	16. Chapter 16

Clarke was very aware that there was to be a party at Miller's on Friday. In fact, she thought, she was in danger of knowing the details of this key social event about as well as she knew her own _name_. Miller himself had invited her with no small amount of enthusiasm, and Murphy had tried to talk her into going, and even Mbege had felt the need to contribute with a sort of broadly encouraging grunt. And then, of course, she arrived at chemistry, and Raven picked up where the three of them had left off.

"You should come, Clarke. You should start getting out more again. Maybe – maybe you'll find someone else to take your mind of it." _It_ was, she thought, becoming rather tiresome. She didn't have some life-threatening mosquito-borne illness. She just had an ex-boyfriend.

"I don't want someone else." She said briskly and a little too honestly as she set about lining up her stationery somewhat more precisely than was strictly necessary.

"Why not, Clarke?" Raven asked, voice surprisingly soft.

"It might be good for you." Emori suggested gently.

"Because she's still in love with Bellamy." Monty yelled at, of course, a completely inappropriate volume.

There was, unsurprisingly, something of a gasp at that, and she could practically feel her classmates waiting for sparks to fly, waiting for her to gaze pathetically at his stern jaw. Well, then. They could wait all damn day. She didn't look up, not this time, because she saw absolutely no point in doing so. She already knew that she'd only catch him pretending she didn't exist.

She took a moment to breathe deeply and sort her highlighters into a new order. And then, reluctantly, she took a risk.

"OK then." She whispered to Raven and Emori. "I'll be there on Friday. But – but not to look for someone else. Just because I think it's been too long since I did anything fun."

The look in Raven's eyes was, she felt, a little too perceptive as she pulled her into an utterly unexpected hug.

…...

She was pleased that she'd come to this party. She was, really, and if she repeated that to herself often enough – well then, she might even come to believe it.

She'd showed up with Raven, and that had been great for ten whole minutes until Wick had appeared and, naturally, her friend had wanted to spend time with him. And she hadn't tried to get rid of Clarke, not at all, because she was an awesome friend, but all the same, third wheeling wasn't her idea of a good night, so she'd gone on her way.

Her next attempt to be sociable had involved Emori, who was of course hanging out with Murphy and, by extension, Bellamy's crowd. And that was OK, really it was, because she could have a passable chat about rugby these days and Emori was a bit of a legend.

But then Bree appeared.

And Bree had every right to appear, of course she did. There were a lot of attractive single guys who were into girls here, and Bree was a very beautiful girl. This was, she seemed to remember, how _fun_ worked. But she was a bit out of practice at fun, after all, so it was perhaps not surprising that she seemed to be finding it quite so difficult to remember that Bree had, in fact, every right to appear. She noticed, as well, that a few other people were less than welcoming of the new arrival. Miller was frowning a little, and Murphy's face was like thunder, but Bellamy was evidently only too pleased with this development so, social dynamics working how they did, it seemed that Bree was to be welcomed with open arms.

It seemed she was destined to be welcomed with _quite literal_ open arms, in fact, as Bellamy invited Bree to sit on his lap of all places, and somehow his hand was on her butt, and Clarke couldn't help but feel that the whole thing was at least a little tasteless.

Miller might have agreed with her, she suspected, or it might just have been that he'd caught sight of a cute guy across the room and wanted to have some fun of his own. And Mbege might have looked annoyed, but it was difficult to tell whether he did, or whether that was just his normal facial expression. And Emori looked absolutely furious but – well – that was only because she was a good friend, she supposed.

Clarke knew full well that it would be a good idea to leave, now. She could see Jasper and Monty across the room, and they were good sorts, and not prone to breaking her heart. But before she'd had time to act on this, Bellamy was on his feet, hand on Bree's waist, shepherding her out of the room in the direction of the stairs. And she couldn't help feeling, really, as someone who knew him pretty well, that he looked more _determined_ than amorous. But she supposed that didn't make a lot of difference – screwing was still screwing.

Before she'd quite realised what she was doing, she was on her feet too.

"Clarke?" That was Emori, and she sounded concerned. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, yeah. Fine. Just fine." It seemed that repeating oneself was a side effect of watching one's ex-boyfriend take a new girl upstairs.

"Are you sure?"

"Fine. Absolutely fine. I'm just going to pop outside for some air."

With that, she bolted for the patio. Of course, it became clear very early on that the patio had been a poor choice of destination, being, as it was, the place where she had educated him about _columns and shit_ and the beautiful thing that was their slightly-fake relationship had, in so many ways, been born. She could hear him, still, whispering in the moonlight that she was _plenty hot_ , and really, it was all a bit much.

She sat down, legs hanging over the lawn, in the same spot she had sat all those months ago, and did what she thought even the most logical of future medics would do given the circumstances. She cried.

She hadn't been crying for very long when she heard the door open and close again behind her. Presuming it was Emori come to check up on her, she wiped her eyes half-heartedly and turned towards her.

It was not Emori. It was, of all people, Bree. This was, to say the least, an unexpected development. She wasn't aware that they'd ever spoken before. And the distinctly grumpy look marring her rather attractive face did not lead her to believe this was to be a particularly pleasant introduction.

"Well, I've just had a new experience." Bree began without preamble, kicking robustly at a flower pot. "No one's ever called me _Clarke_ during sex before."

" _What_?" She couldn't have said that. It wasn't possible.

"No one's ever called me Clarke during sex before. Well, foreplay, really. But yeah, not something I expect to hear when I've got a guy's cock in my mouth."

" _What_?" Yes. She had definitely got into repeating herself.

"You heard me the first time."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. Is – is he OK?"

"Of course he's not OK. He's absolutely smashed and fucking delusional. And then he looked like he was about to start _crying_. Does that sound _OK_ to you?"

"No. No. I guess -"

"For fuck's sake, Clarke. Do I have to spell it out? I didn't come out here for the fun of it. Aren't you going to go to him?"

"I don't think he'd appreciate that."

"Right. Because the fact he just called me by _your name_ while I was sucking him off totally doesn't mean he wants to see you."

"I'll – I'll get some of his friends to take him home."

"Friends? He doesn't have _friends_ , Clarke." Bree looked at her as if she had lost her mind. "He has _followers_ , but not _friends._ The only friend he ever had was you."

"That's where you're wrong." She said, chin held high, and walked back into the house.

She knew who she was looking for. She'd worked it out straight away, actually, the moment Bree had made it clear that Bellamy was very much in need of some good friends right now. There were two people in this party who were perfect for the task.

"Emori. John." She tried very hard to remove any hint of panic from her voice. "Can I borrow you?"

They looked perplexed to say the least, but nonetheless followed her as she led the way to a rather more private spot at the foot of the stairs.

"What's this about, Clarke?" Emori asked, concern knotting her brow.

"It's Bellamy. Bree just – she told me that he's in a bit of a bad way. He's had too much to drink, and he's not in the mood to enjoy the party. Could you – could you get him home?"

"There's something you're not telling us." Murphy guessed, and she found herself slightly taken aback at this evidence that he was capable of being a little too perceptive.

"Yes." She agreed. There was no point hiding it. "I suspect you'll work some of it out when you get to him."

"We're on it." Emori appeared to find it an easy decision. "Thanks for getting us."

"Thanks for looking out for him." Murphy concurred. "He doesn't deserve you."

"That's where you're wrong." She muttered, eyes averted, as they began to make their way up the stairs.

It was difficult to enjoy the party after that. It was difficult because she was worried about Bellamy, of course, and because her head was spinning as she tried to work out what it might mean that he was going around calling Bree by her name. She thought it was presumably a sign that he still missed her, which could only be promising, but on the other hand he was probably now so embarrassed that she'd be in an even worse position than before. Not to mention that he was only allowing himself to miss her when he was completely drunk, which was less than encouraging. It was difficult to enjoy herself, too, because she was so preoccupied with one very important question.

Would texting him make it worse?

She wanted so badly to show him that she would like them to be on better terms, and to show that she cared whether he was OK. And it didn't seem likely that she could make the situation any worse than it already was. And yes, sure, it was completely pathetic to be quite so desperate to reach out to him but – well – if she wasn't brave enough to try it tonight, when would she be?

She struggled through the rest of the evening, made it back to Raven's. Persevered through half an hour of assorted gossip and waited for her friend to start snoring gently. And then she reached for her phone and frowned at the screen for a good seven minutes.

 _Hope you made it home OK. And I hope you survive the hangover_.

He didn't reply, of course. But somehow, somewhere deep inside of her, she was certain that he did read it.

…...

Monday rolled around, and she made a careful study of not hoping for too much. She didn't hope for Bellamy to speak to her, nor even to acknowledge her presence. She didn't hope for Bree to have suddenly become her chief supporter. And she certainly didn't hope for Emori and Murphy to tell her anything about what had occurred on Saturday night when she had sent them to find Bellamy, because she thought it was probably not her place to know.

Of course, well-meaning Emori thought differently.

"So, that was an interesting walk home." She began, quite unprompted, as the three of them took their seats in Chemistry.

"Please, don't." Clarke folded her hands carefully in her lap, and attempted to adopt a dignified expression. "I don't think you should tell me."

Her two friends frowned at her at that.

"Don't you want to know what he said?" Emori seemed rather puzzled.

"No. I don't. I – if I'm ever going to fix this, I need to get there honestly, not by talking about him behind his back."

Emori couldn't seem to make sense of that one, but Raven shot her a rather knowing look. "Good for you, Clarke."

The lesson began to unfold around them at that point, some particularly dry bit of organic chemistry that, she couldn't help feeling, it might take a lifetime to memorise. It was unfortunate, then, that she had only a matter of months in which to do so. But nevertheless, she copied down the notes with a good deal of diligence and forced herself not to muse for too long on what, exactly, Emori might have said if she'd allowed her to speak.

So caught up was she in her own thoughts that it took her a while to notice that the class seemed to be in the middle of some kind of argument.

"I don't care what he did, Haber was a great chemist." Diggs appeared to be having a row with Stirling, and she couldn't for the life of her work out why. They weren't even studying anything to do with Haber, just now.

"How can you not care what he did?" Raven waded in, utterly incredulous, while Pike made vain attempts to regain control of the conversation. "He's responsible for killing thousands."

"You can't just overlook that." Clarke found herself joining the argument. "You've got to look at his whole life, balance the good against the bad."

"Clarke's right." She jumped to attention at the sound of Bellamy's voice. _Clarke's right_? That didn't sound like something he would say.

"I am?" She knew she was, of course, but she couldn't quite work out why he was willing to admit it.

"Yeah. You are. It's important to look at the whole picture before you judge someone, for good or bad."

She wasn't entirely clear on whether they were still talking about chemistry. But that didn't seem to matter right now. Bellamy was speaking to her again, and there was only one adequate response to this.

She didn't smile. Oh no. She simply _beamed_.

…...

She arrived at Maths on Tuesday to clear evidence that the entire class was conspiring against her. Well, perhaps they were conspiring in her favour, actually, seeing as the conspiracy seemed to consist of forcing her and Bellamy to sit together. They'd all arrived early, and taken all but two adjacent seats, and she couldn't help but wonder if, maybe, Mrs Kane might even be in on this as a couple of desks seemed to have been temporarily misplaced from the classroom to force her hand. Either way, she sighed and took one of the seats. If Bellamy wanted to kick up a fuss, he would surely do so when he arrived.

He showed up at the door seconds later, and a deep frown marred his brow as he narrowed his eyes and took in the situation. For an horrific moment, she genuinely believed he was about to start yelling.

Then he sighed, and shook his head, and marched over to the place by her side with only a hint of the air of a man going to the gallows.

"Hey." She muttered, not really expecting a response.

"Hey." He echoed. "They're not subtle, are they?"

"Not at all." She giggled.

"Thank you, Clarke." The teacher's voice interrupted. "Today, you will please work through this sheet of 'show that' style questions with your partner. I expect to hear plenty of discussion in your pairs, because these are all challenging questions."

Bellamy groaned next to her, which was hardly a surprise, she thought, given he'd just been instructed to spend the lesson having _plenty of discussion_ with his ex-girlfriend. She was startled, then, when he gave voice to his displeasure, and revealed that this was not his principal objection at all.

"I hate 'show that' questions. It's just cruel, to let someone get all the way to the end of a problem and then tell them that they were wrong the whole time."

"Can't you normally tell before the end if you're completely wrong?"

"Well, yes. But my point stands."

"I'm not sure it does, actually." She allowed a hint of teasing to enter her voice. "Come on, let's get on with these. We've got Emori and Raven to beat."

"Competitive 'show-that' questions. What a way to spend a Tuesday morning." She laughed at that, although she wasn't entirely clear on whether she was allowed to laugh at his jokes any more. Whatever. She had more pressing concerns, like whether or not this fragile civility was going to last the duration of the lesson.

It didn't actually, in the end. No, it gave way to a surprisingly light-hearted atmosphere, in which he took the piss out of her mistakes with good spirit, and she criticised his bad jokes, and somehow they also beat Emori and Raven. That was a crucial point, she thought. It was all very well enjoying Bellamy's company, but she was here first and foremost to do maths.

There was a decent-sized elephant in the room, of course, because neither of them got as far as acknowledging that they were speaking to each other. Certainly, they didn't mention the fact that they were both _enjoying_ speaking to each other, nor was any attempt made to discuss the events of Saturday night, nor to rehash any of the apologies that had fallen so flat between them in recent weeks. But it was, all things considered, a rather _cheerful_ elephant. It didn't seem to matter, somehow, Clarke thought, that they hadn't talked about the state of their relationship, because there was maths and laughter and surprisingly easy company.

Never in her life had she been so disappointed to hear the bell ring for the end of the lesson.

…...

Clarke knew it was naive to hope. Four days of careful politeness and one enjoyable maths lesson did not constitute a miracle by any stretch of the imagination. There was certainly no reason to hope that he would choose this week to reinstate his habit of visiting the library on a Thursday.

Yet hope she nonetheless did.

And she knew that this made her really rather foolish, but somehow she was powerless to prevent it. And that meant, too, that she was powerless to prevent the crushing disappointment she felt on arriving through those doors and realising that he was, in fact, nowhere to be seen. _Of course_ he was nowhere to be seen. Why should it be any different? He hadn't forgiven her, he'd just decided to be civil. With a heavy sigh, she returned her books, then set about making her selections alone.

She still liked the library. Books had been, in some ways, her solace since being so thoroughly dumped. But at the same time, this place reminded her of Bellamy so acutely that it was at least a little painful to be here without him. She chose her reading for the week quickly, not keen to hang around and mope alone. She picked a couple of items from the Art History section, and one novel, and was on the point of checking out her books and leaving when a sudden impulse convinced her to head to the desk via the History section.

There was nothing so bizarre about that, she told herself. It was vaguely on the way. And she was into History herself, now, to some extent, and if she found something to make civil conversation with Bellamy about – well then. So much the better.

That wasn't what she found, in the end.

It wasn't her fault, she would insist to herself that night. She couldn't have acted any differently. Why would there be a newly published book called _Augustus_ , with that damn Prima Porta statue on the front of it, if she wasn't supposed to take it for him?

The universe had been planning this.

Without allowing herself to overthink it, she picked up the book and headed for the desk. It occurred to her that she was going to have to think of a story of some sort, here, if she was to be allowed to take _Augustus_ home for him but – well – she'd told worse lies. And in the balance of the good and the bad, surely she was doing this for the right reason?

"Can I check those out for you?" The older woman working the front desk was, thank goodness, a familiar face.

"Yes, thanks, Juliet. These three are for me. And this one – this is for my friend Bellamy, you know, who I usually come to the library with?"

"Taller than you? Dark hair? I've not seen him for a while."

"No. He's – he's been ill. I know it's a bit out of the ordinary but – could you check this out for him? His surname's Blake."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Her face showed nothing but sympathy and Clarke felt, yet again, that kick to the stomach that came with deception. "Of course, I'll check that out. I'll renew his other loans, too. It looks like it's been a long time since he was last here."

"Yes." She agreed, deciding to keep her story simple, this time. "Thank you so much."

"No problem." Juliet handed over the stack of books. "Give him my best. Enjoy your books."

"Thanks." With a relieved smile, her mission was accomplished, and she tried very hard not to break into a run as she fled through the doors.

…...

Checking out the book had been the easy part. She could see that, now, as she sat on her bed and failed to come up with a plan. How was she to give a rather perfect almost-gift which made reference to their shared history to a boy who was currently barely speaking to her?

There was no subtle way to achieve it, she decided in the end. She would just have to do it.

So it was that, the following morning, she arrived in the common room early and sat, alert, waiting for him to arrive.

"What's wrong with you?" Raven asked, tactful as ever. "You look like a deranged meerkat."

"I just – I need to give something to Bellamy."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I'm trying to have a go at – I don't know – patching things up? Doing better?"

"Good for you." Raven nodded at her with something like respect. "I hope it works out."

"Me too." She agreed, fighting down the rising tide of panic. "I just hope -"

She abandoned her sentence without regret as he entered the room.

"Go on." Raven elbowed her cheerfully in the side. "How badly can it go?"

That was, she thought, not her friend's most encouraging choice of phrase. Based on past experience, it could go very badly indeed. All the same, she forced herself to her feet and approached him at his locker.

"Hey." She began nervously.

"Morning." He offered, tone rather flat. He didn't exactly seem _angry_ , she thought, but he did look a bit confused as to what she was doing there.

"So I went to the library last night and – and this is probably really silly, but – well – I saw a book I thought you might like. So I checked it out for you. And so, yeah, here it is." She thrust the precious _Augustus_ out towards him self-consciously, wondering if perhaps she was holding it a little like a shield.

"You – you did?" He seemed rather puzzled that such a thing was possible.

"Yeah." He still hadn't reached out to take the book, and she was becoming quite uncomfortable. "Of course, maybe you're too busy to read at the moment. And that's cool, obviously, I can keep it and take it back next week. I just thought -"

"Clarke. Stop." He took the book from her, apparently exasperated into action by her rambling. "It looks like the perfect book for me. I'd definitely like to read it."

"Good. That's good."

"Yeah. Thank you." He sounded genuinely grateful, she thought, but that confusion was definitely still there.

"You're welcome." She said – or perhaps squeaked – and scuttled back to her place at Raven's side before he could get out another word.

She suspected that was it for the day. She was intending to take small steps, gradually show him that she was still worthy of his civility. A little polite conversation, the occasional book loan. Nothing ground-breaking.

So it was that she set out for maths in Raven and Emori's company, as usual. They arrived at their classroom, and it contained, once again, the usual number of seats. Clearly something _had_ been going on with the missing furniture earlier in the week. But all was very much back to normal, now, as she sat herself in her usual place, and Emori and Raven sat together, as was entirely _usual_.

She hadn't been there long when Bellamy walked into the room and took a good look around. She saw him take in the furniture, could almost hear him counting out the plentiful seats.

And then, in a most _un_ usual development, he selected the place next to her.

…...

Clarke had thought that the book couldn't exactly _hurt_ her chances of repairing some semblance of friendship with Bellamy, but she hadn't realised quite how effective it would be in making things better. It was only a book, for goodness' sake, and one he could perfectly well have borrowed himself if he wasn't so set on avoiding every place that had played any role in their relationship.

But clearly there was something here she was missing, she realised, when she received a text that evening. She was in the middle of watching a rather interesting documentary with her mother, but when she saw his name flash up on her phone she knew she had to read it immediately.

_Thanks for the book. It's great._

It was, all things considered, possibly the most boring text they had ever exchanged, but all the same, she couldn't repress the smile threatening to split her face in two.

"You seem happy." Her mother commented warmly, the documentary apparently forgotten by both of them.

"Yeah." She agreed easily. "It's – it's from Bellamy. I think we're speaking to each other again."

"That's great news, honey."

"Yes. It really is. I know it's stupid but – I've really missed him. We're not even really friends again but it's so much better than before."

"I can tell." Her mother commented with a teasing tone. "You can't seem to stop smiling."

"You'd understand why, if you'd seen how good we were together." For the first time in months, the thought did not make her truly _sad_. It only made her deeply nostalgic. "I'm sorry I kept it all hidden from you."

"Don't be. Like I said, it's a teenage rite of passage. But I'd like to meet him one day, if you find yourself thinking that would be appropriate."

"We'll see." She said, allowing a new hint of optimism to creep into her heart.

"Now stop chatting to me and reply to that text." Her mother instructed her with a smile.

She laughed at that and got to work. She wanted so badly to send the perfect message, even though she knew no such thing existed. She was absolutely aware she was overthinking it, but -

"Just text back." Her mother interrupted her thoughts with an affectionate smile. "Just go for it."

She took a deep breath and her mother's advice.

_I'm pleased it's good. I didn't even look at it closely, I just saw the title and the Prima Porta and thought it was something you needed to read._

She forced herself not to count the seconds until she received a reply. In fact, she thought, she did a halfway decent job of concentrating on the rest of the documentary. And then, too, she went to her room and did a little sketching, and through it all she was not checking her phone every three minutes. Not at all.

_It's not exactly ground-breaking. I'm pretty sure I haven't actually learnt anything. But it's well written and it was kind of you to fetch it for me._

_It's only a book. And I was in the library anyway._

_I was more talking about the gesture and the thought behind it. I think you know what I mean._

She could scarcely believe her eyes at that. Was this it, then? Were they allowed to begin to acknowledge the mess that she had made between them, now, too?

 _It seemed like the least I could do_.

_Well it meant a lot to me. Have a good weekend, Clarke._

_You too. Enjoy the book._


	17. Chapter 17

It had been, all things considered, a pretty damn positive week so far. Bellamy was speaking to her, and although texting had not made a repeat appearance, he had continued to sit next to her in Maths. She had even gone so far as to smile at him in Chemistry, but the response she'd got had looked more like a sort of pained grimace so she wondered if maybe she ought to hold off on that one for a bit longer. And the highlight of the past few days had certainly been the heartfelt and very _Blake_ hug she'd received from Octavia in the middle of the corridor on the way between lessons. It hadn't just been the embrace itself, either, but also the gabbled sentence about how much happier Bellamy had seemed over the weekend and how the book had been a great idea.

Things were, broadly speaking, looking up.

She couldn't help feeling that it was all too good to be true, in some way or another. Perhaps he was now playing a trick on _her_. No, she thought he was probably too decent a person, these days, for that. Perhaps it was all just an accident, perhaps he was only being civil and she was reading too much into it?

Perhaps she should stop panicking and just enjoy it while it lasted.

The school biology journal was at least no longer the bane of her existence, these days. No, she had been so busy being _fun_ and then becoming very suddenly _not_ fun that the minor annoyance of wasting her Wednesday afternoon seemed almost to pale into insignificance by comparison. So it was that, as she walked into the common room after the meeting that week, she was already writing her Art History homework in her head rather than concentrating on her surroundings.

"Hey, Clarke." Bellamy was occupying a sofa, muddy rugby kit still clinging to his frame, book in hand. She was struck by a rather sudden onslaught of nostalgic deja-vu.

"Hey." She decided on impulse to walk towards the chair next to him, rather than her locker. "How's the book?"

"Nearly finished." He put it to one side. Well then. Apparently they were to have an actual conversation. "Hopefully I'll be done tonight so I can take it back tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Isn't Thursday night library night?"

"So – so you're thinking of coming to the library tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I thought it was about time I started coming to library night again. If – if that's OK with you, of course."

"Yeah. Of course it is. I'm sorry I made you give it up."

"You didn't _make me_ give it up, Clarke. I gave it up because I was being all hurt and immature."

"But it was the one who made you feel that way." She pointed out stubbornly.

"I think probably there's no point us arguing over who gets the bigger share of the blame." He suggested, tone surprisingly light.

"You might be right." She conceded. After all, she wanted to get on with fixing this, not row over who had broken it. She knew full well that the answer was her, anyway. "All the same, I'm sorry I hurt you."

"I know you are. I'm sorry I reacted so badly, for what it's worth. I just – I thought I'd finally found someone who actually liked me for _me_ and – and it hurt a lot, to feel like that was taken away again."

"I get that. For the record, I _did_ like you for you."

"I know. I get that now."

There was a beat of silence, and she wondered whether she was supposed to fill it. Wondered, too, how on Earth she was supposed to go about doing so. How did one follow up on a conversation that was at once so heartbreaking and so positive?

"I've missed you." He murmured, and – well – after that, she was only too clear on what she was supposed to say next.

"I've missed you, too. I'm looking forward to having company at the library again tomorrow."

"I'm looking forward to it too. Do you think that, maybe... I know it might be difficult but – but could we maybe have a go at being friends?"

"Yes." She didn't have to consider her answer at all. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

…...

Clarke was rather startled to find Bellamy standing at her locker when lessons ended that Thursday. Sure, he had said he would be going to the library, but that didn't mean she absolutely believed it would actually happen. And, yes, they'd agreed to have a go at being friends, but that didn't mean she was expecting him to be standing there waiting for her.

"You OK?" He asked brightly. "Excited for the library? How was Art History?"

Hmm. Perhaps a little _too_ brightly.

"Hey." She said, bemused. "Which question would you like me to answer first?"

He gave an awkward chuckle at that. "Yes. Well. Shall we get going?"

"Can I maybe get my bag first?" She gestured to the locker she had scarcely had time to open.

"Yes. Yes. Of course. Sorry."

"Bellamy." Something in the tone of her voice seemed to cut through his borderline hysteria, as he straightened a little and looked her in the eye with visible effort. "Shall we try not making this weird? We went to the library loads before we started dating, and that wasn't awkward. Can we pleased just enjoy hanging out?"

He smiled at that, a rather less panicked look in his eyes. "That sounds like a plan."

After some moments she finished faffing with her assorted belongings and hefted her backpack over her shoulders. He didn't offer to carry anything for her, and she was strangely grateful. It was much easier to pretend they were politely platonic friends when he didn't go around making ridiculously kind gestures every five minutes.

It was still, however, a distinctly odd experience, to walk out of the school gates by his side but with a careful foot of space between them. It might as well have been a careful _mile_ , she thought, it felt so insurmountable. And she knew she should be grateful to have him back in her life in any sense at all, but all the same, this was pretty damn bittersweet. She wasn't quite sure whether it was the happiest day of her year, to have his company again, or the saddest, to see what she had lost thrown into such sharp relief.

She brushed such thoughts aside, and resolved to make the most of it. This must be difficult for both of them, she realised, but she was determined to be a good friend to him. And she knew that, logically speaking, being his friend had to be a whole lot better than being treated like chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. But if he was going to want to continue this friendship, she was going to have to make some attempt at being entertaining company, rather than walking the whole way to the library in silence.

"How was your afternoon?" She asked. That seemed an uncontroversial place to start.

"History was alright. The Tudors may not be as exciting as the Romans, but they're not bad."

"Wow. High praise indeed. What did you learn about the Tudors today?"

"A bunch of finance policy stuff. I don't think you'd be interested." He told her firmly.

"I might be." She said, attempting to sound encouraging.

"Trust me, you wouldn't." She repressed with some effort the urge to slap him. Was he serious about this friendship thing, or not?

"I could _try_ to be interested. I hear that's how friendship works, I'm supposed to show an interest in your life."

He looked at her with a strangely distressed expression, and she couldn't really see any grounds for that. "Sorry. Thank you for trying to be interested in my afternoon."

"You're welcome." She said, at least a little sourly, and noted that, despite his apology, he had still actually shared nothing further about his History lesson.

A silence grew, and she let it. She was already exhausted and the library was not yet in sight.

"Octavia says hi." He said suddenly, as if the idea that they might have some conversation had only just occurred to him. "She misses you, I think."

"Tell her I say hi, back." She jumped to follow his lead before realising it was a bit pointless. "Actually, scratch that. I'll text her myself."

"You will?"

"Yeah. We don't talk much but – yeah. We text a little."

"Oh." He frowned for a moment, and she rather wondered why she had ever agreed to this scheme. If such a thing as a world record for the most awkward library visit in human history existed, she certainly knew what the winning entry would be.

Just when she was beginning to contemplate feigning a headache and fleeing to her home, he spoke again.

"I might have made that bit up." He mumbled quietly. "About Octavia saying hi. I – I haven't even told her we're hanging out because I knew she'd get over-excited and take it the wrong way. I was just trying to think of something to talk about, and Octavia seemed like an uncontroversial topic."

"I don't think Tudor finance policies are particularly emotionally sensitive, either." It seemed like a safer thing to say, than to hang around wondering why he was overthinking this just as much as she was. Why he seemed at least as anxious as she was, if not even more so.

He gave a nervous laugh at that, and took an audible breath, and tried again. "Are you looking forward to going to the library?"

"Yes." She said carefully. "I read a very good novel last week set in revolutionary France. I might borrow something else by the same author."

"Still not quit your historical fiction habit?"

"Well, without your careful guidance, there's been no one to steer me away from it." She allowed herself to engage in a spot of sarcastic teasing.

"We'll have to put that right. Maybe they'll even have something fascinating about the economy of Tudor England."

"Pretty sure that's an oxymoron."

She could swear they both gave a sigh of relief as the library came into sight at last. They would be fine, she knew, once they got inside. They would have things to talk about, rather than only awkward silences to dwell on. They made brisk work of the last few metres to the door, and headed straight to the desk to return their books.

"Bellamy." Juliet greeted him with enthusiasm, even while he looked somewhat taken aback. "It's so good to see you looking better. Clarke seemed so worried about you while you were ill. I hope you enjoyed the book?"

"Erm, yeah, thanks." He was, evidently and unsurprisingly, very confused. "It – it really cheered me up."

"Good, good. Isn't that what books are for?" She finished processing their returns and waved them on their way.

Clarke counted down the seconds in her head, wondering how long it would take him to explode at this new evidence of her habit of lying, how long it would take him to storm out of the doors and never speak to her again – for good this time. She should have told him, she knew, should have been more honest about how she'd borrowed _Augustus_ , but now it was all too late and -

"Clarke?" He seemed to have a hand on her shoulder, but that couldn't be right. "You doing alright?"

"I'm so sorry." She got out in a rush. "I know that you think I'm a liar and – and I know that this has just confirmed it. I swear, I didn't mean any harm, but I know I should have been more honest and -"

"Hey." Yes, his hand definitely _was_ on her shoulder, because now it was squeezing gently. "It's OK. The balance of good and bad, remember? You did something that obviously made you really uncomfortable to do a nice thing for me. Why would I be annoyed about that?"

"It's OK?" She echoed, disbelieving.

"It's OK. It's more than OK. We're still practising being friends?"

"I hope so."

"Good. Me too."

With that, he released her shoulder, and she resisted the urge to sigh. She forced herself instead to adopt a bright smile as she followed him to the History section, to laugh out loud when he told her she had to read a decent book about the French Revolution instead of that _fictionalised crap_. And as the minutes passed, she found that her joyful reactions were no longer entirely forced. No, by the time they moved to Art History, she was giggling at least a little hysterically at his impression of a Picasso painting, and he was grinning down at her in return.

Maybe they really could do this, she wondered. Maybe they really could be friends.

…...

That optimism lasted all of sixteen hours. By the time their Maths lesson rolled round the following morning, hot on the heels of a series of inconsequential texts about their latest reading material, she was very much aware that being _friends_ with Bellamy was going to be extremely challenging. Because this one day of friendship had been quite long enough for her to realise that _friends_ was not all she wanted them to be. She missed the warmth of his arms, and the touch of his lips, and all of the physical side of their old relationship, of course. But more than anything else, she missed him looking at her like she was someone special and at least a little bit beautiful. It was strange, she thought, to have all of these frivolous jovial texts but with quite such a _platonic_ tone.

It was even stranger to sit by his side in Maths that morning with a careful six inches of space between them. She could well remember how they used to sit together, scarcely a hair's breadth apart, feet intertwining under the desk when they thought Mrs Kane wasn't looking. There was something more than the chilliness of the day outside that had her feeling distinctly cold, this morning.

"Statistics." He said, with an incongruously victorious tone, as he began leafing through the stack of books on his desk.

"You say that like it's a good thing." She whispered back. "I can't imagine a worse way to start a Friday."

"I can." He said in a surprisingly matter-of-fact manner. "Finding out the girlfriend I adored had been lying to me for months, that was a worse way to start a Friday."

She was aware that her mouth was gaping open in a most unflattering way, but she seemed powerless to do anything about it. Had he really just said that? How could he have said that? And after all the progress they'd made in the last couple of days, as well.

So much for friendship.

She opened her textbook with more force than was, perhaps, strictly necessary, and got on with a spot of hypothesis testing. Admittedly, she didn't get a great deal of hypothesis testing done. She was rather busy dwelling on the verbal slap across the face Bellamy had just delivered so casually. But she was determined, if nothing else, to _pretend_ that she was getting on with the task at hand despite his hurtful words.

"Clarke?" He asked after some minutes. "A little help with question five, part C?"

She ignored him. She was just so fed up of expending so much emotional energy on this boy, being so exhausted in the name of showing him she was doing better, when he seemed so determined to throw her attempts back in her face at every opportunity.

"Clarke?" He tried again.

She maintained her stony silence.

"Look, Clarke. I wasn't saying that to upset you. I was – I was honestly just making conversation. We're not going to get very far if we never talk about it, are we? If we just keep sending each other stupid texts about Picasso and avoid mentioning anything to do with what happened?"

"I guess you might be right." She acknowledged reluctantly.

"I'm sorry for making a mess of it." He muttered, making a show of typing something into his calculator for Mrs Kane's benefit. "I've never really been in this situation before."

"Me neither." She kept her eyes fixed on the page for a moment, desperately trying to repress the question that was threatening to burst out of her.

She couldn't ask him, she mustn't. It would just embarrass the both of them. And it didn't matter any more, anyway. And, besides which -

"Adored?" She admitted defeat at last. "You said _adored_."

"I must have been reading too many of your terrible historical novels." He tried to pass it off with a light tone and a shrug of his shoulders, but she fixed him with a glare. "OK. Yes. I said _adored_."

She knew she ought to say something constructive, something that would help to build the peace between them. Something about how much she had valued him, too, and how much she continued to value him as a friend. How grateful she was for this chance to show him she still deserved a place in his life, in whatever capacity.

"I'm a fucking idiot." She told him, instead.

And the worst thing of all, somehow, yet also the best, the most impossible thing about these two impossible days, was that he knew exactly what she meant. She could read it in the sympathetic sorrow in his eyes, in the wry twisting of his lips, that he understood her perfectly. That he understood exactly what she was trying to say.

Only a _fucking idiot_ could have thrown that away.

…...

Clarke did not make a habit of receiving phone calls at three o'clock on a Sunday morning. It took her a while, therefore, to work out quite what was going on when she awoke in the middle of the night to a persistent buzzing sound, and to Bellamy's name flashing across the screen of her phone.

Why in the name of sanity could her ex-boyfriend – and, admittedly, current friend – possibly be phoning her at three o'clock on a Sunday morning?

Without stopping to wonder for too long whether the world had actually gone mad, she picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Clarke. Thank God." Those three words were enough for her to establish that something was very much not right.

"Bellamy? Are you OK?"

"Yeah – yeah. I'm OK." Then why on Earth was he phoning her at three AM? And, more to the point, why did he sound the opposite of OK?

"You sure?"

"Yeah – have you – have you got a minute? Just a minute to talk?"

"Yes. Of course. But you need to tell me what's going on, Bellamy." She hesitated a moment before speaking her mind. "I'm a bit worried about you."

"It's not me." He rushed to assure her, but at his tone she felt her heart drop to her heels. Octavia, then? Or - "It's my mum."

"What's happened?" She asked, forcing herself to remain calm. After all, future doctors shouldn't panic.

"She's going to be OK. It's just that – we just got back from the hospital. I had to take her to the hospital, Clarke. She was working and – and one of her clients basically beat her up."

"Oh my God. I'm so sorry to hear that, Bellamy. How is she?"

"She was lucky, apparently." His tone made it clear that he did not agree with the assessment. "Bruised ribs, a concussion, and a broken wrist."

"OK. That sounds like a horrible experience, but she'll heal fine from those injuries." She tried to find a balance between sounding soothing, but not belittling the issue.

"Yeah. I knew you'd say that. That's partly why I called you. I just – she's really shaken and pretending not to be. And I'm worried about her."

"Of course you are. That's a perfectly normal reaction, Bellamy."

"And she's insisting we don't tell O but that's pointless. She'll work it out. And – and she's worried about what she'll do for work while her wrist's healing, but I keep telling her we'll be fine. I've asked her not to – not to go back to that line of work, but she won't listen to me." She could hear his worries running away with him and rather wished she could reach out and give him a hug.

"Maybe you can try to have the conversation again when she's healed and a bit calmer."

"Yeah. Maybe. Thanks. Thanks for picking the phone up. How pathetic am I, phoning my ex in the middle of the night like this?"

"Not pathetic at all, Bellamy." She was quick to reassure him. "You know you only have to let me know if I can do anything to help."

"You already did help. I – there's no one else I could really talk to about this."

"I get that."

"Can we – could we talk about something else for a bit? I'm so sorry, I know it's the middle of the night but – I could use a distraction."

"Sure. Can I tell you about this book I read last month? You'd have liked it. It was about the differences between Greek and Roman art."

"That sounds great." He said, sounding a little too grateful. "So what are the differences?"

"OK, so, of course there are different periods of Greek -"

"Clarke?"

"Yeah." She tried not to sound too frustrated at the interruption. Did he want to know about Greek and Roman art, or not?

"I think – I think I might have been a bit of a _fucking idiot_ , too."


	18. Chapter 18

Clarke greeted Bellamy with a hug on Monday morning. It seemed like the right thing to do, a comforting gesture to show him that she was there for him while he was worried about his mum. And, really, she thought that if they were on phone calls at three AM terms, they were presumably also on cheery platonic hugging terms.

At least, she meant it as a cheery platonic hug. A good eight seconds later she was still in his arms, and she started to wonder whether, perhaps, something might have gone awry with that plan. _Whatever_ , she decided, relaxing more deeply into his embrace. Plans were overrated anyway.

She started to hear whispers from the other occupants of the common room eventually and decided that was probably her cue to pull away. The last thing he needed at a time like this, she realised, was to be pestered by a load of gossip about platonic hugs with his ex-girlfriend.

"Thanks." He muttered, as he turned to make a start on getting his books for the morning. "I needed that."

"I thought you might. How are things?" She asked, knowing he would know what she meant, keeping her voice low to avoid difficult questions from bored onlookers.

"About as good as could be expected." She gathered from the tone of his voice that this meant, frankly, _not good_.

She took a deep breath and set about saying the words she'd been considering almost since she picked up that phone. "Listen, Bellamy, I've been thinking. And I'm not saying this to be patronising, and I know that you could handle this alone. But I don't want you to think you _have to_ handle this alone. You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that my mother's got some useful friends. My godmother Callie is a lawyer, a good one. Would you – would you consider taking her number? You might be able to get some money from the man who hurt your mum."

"I'd rather punch him in the face." Bellamy said with sufficient force that Clarke thought, actually, he might just do that. To her relief, he channelled his wrath into slamming his locker shut, instead, for now.

"I know." She reached out a tentative hand to grasp his shoulder. "But this way you still have a nice clean record when you go off to university and get that sports scholarship you've been dreaming of, and your mum and sister are provided for, and your mum doesn't have to go back to doing that extra job."

"Your problem solving skills come in handy sometimes, don't they?" He asked her with the thinnest hint of a smile. "That's really kind of you, Clarke. If you think she can help, I'll take her number."

She fished the card out of her pocket and handed it over. "Here. For a moment there I thought you might punch _me_ in the face."

"Maybe I might have done, a year ago. Or even six months ago. But then I went and got to know this infuriating girl called Clarke Griffin who's made me rethink a few things." She blinked at that, struggling to process what sounded like a rather enormous compliment, albeit a somewhat strange one.

"Thank you." She said, in the end, not sure whether or not it was the right thing to say, but not seeing any better options. "Chemistry?"

He nodded and gestured to the door. "After you, Princess."

She did start a little at that, at hearing the old nickname fall so affectionately from his lips, but she didn't panic. She didn't even, as it happened, _overthink_ it. No, she simply lead the way to their first lesson beaming from ear-to-ear.

…...

It hadn't been a good week, of course. Bellamy was still visibly upset about his mum – or at least, visibly upset to anyone who knew him well enough to see it. Anyone who knew him well enough to read the tensing of his fists when he wasn't distracted by buoyant conversation, to note the higher-than-usual pitch of his voice as he overreacted at least a little to even the mildest of stressful situations.

OK, to be honest, it seemed that she was the only one who noticed. Everyone else was apparently too busy asking pointed questions about why the two of them were suddenly joined at the hip again.

"Are you sure you're not back together?" Murphy asked with his usual subtlety as they sat around the lunch table on Wednesday.

In his defence, Clarke supposed it was probably an easy mistake to make. She had just given Bellamy half of her slice of chocolate cake. But that was only because she knew he really liked chocolate cake, and she happened to be a believer that there was such a thing as _too much chocolate_.

"Yes." Clarke replied honestly, trying not to sound too sad about it.

"Platonically close exes share dessert all the time." Bellamy claimed, evidently suppressing laughter even as she suppressed the urge to elbow him affectionately in the ribs. He wasn't really helping their case, here, she felt. He could be doing more to look cold and detached and things.

Then again, she was quite pleased he wasn't doing that.

"So maybe we can agree that, at a stretch, platonically close exes could share dessert _some_ of the time." Raven joined in with spirit. "I contend, however, that platonically close exes do not _feed each other_ the shared dessert."

"We didn't feed _each other_." Bellamy pointed out carefully. "Clarke fed me, but only two bites. I ate the rest of it for myself."

"She'd have fed you the whole thing if Emori hadn't ruined it by sniggering." Raven argued.

"I think we're missing the point, here." Emori suggested. "I'm pretty sure _platonically close exes_ is an oxymoron. You surely can't feel completely platonic about someone you've ever seen in that way."

Clarke tried to ignore the frankly _lovestruck_ look that Murphy sent at Emori in the wake of that comment. At least someone's relationship had been having a good few months, it seemed.

She found it harder to ignore the fact that Bellamy appeared unable to respond to Emori's accusation.

"Could we talk about something else now?" She suggested, rather keen to give her cheeks an opportunity to cool.

"Only if you promise we can come back to this later." Murphy insisted.

"It seems like you will, whether we want you to or not." Bellamy grumbled.

"Emori tells me you guys have plans for the weekend." Clarke recalled. "Surely you can't pass up an opportunity to brag about that?"

It was a good choice, she thought, in the minutes that followed. It occupied the very friend who was most persistent in pestering them, and Emori was only too keen, too, to wax lyrical about how _romantic_ she expected their upcoming date to be. It wasn't a word she was accustomed to hearing associated with John Murphy, but on this occasion, she was disinclined to argue.

But then, all of a sudden, she realised that Bellamy hadn't spoken in a good three minutes. And, sure enough, a glimpse at his face revealed that he was fretting about his mum again, jaw set firm, eyes cold.

Without giving herself the chance to overthink it, she reached towards him under the table. She knew what she'd find there, knew his hand would be balled into a fist at his side. Smiling brightly at the conversation before her all the while, she made a gentle start on uncurling his fingers, on rubbing her thumb against his palm. On showing him that she'd always be there for him, close by his side, however platonic or otherwise.

He relaxed after a few seconds, intertwined his fingers with hers. Squeezed once, gently, and sent a quick half-smile in her direction which was, it seemed, destined not to pass unnoticed.

"Would you look at that." Murphy could barely keep the grin off his face, and Clarke did not think it was only because of the opportunity to make fun. She had a distinct suspicion, too, that he was quite excited to see his friends less-than-subtly on good terms again.

Raven took up the theme then, eyes narrowed at the space where both of their arms disappeared beneath the table.

"The very image of platonic closeness."

…...

"You're coming to the library." Clarke informed Bellamy, marching up to him at his locker, as school ended on Thursday.

"Of course I'm coming to the library." He agreed, looking a little confused at her strident tone.

"Good. I was worried you might bail on me to go sit at home worrying over your mum."

"Have you been speaking to her behind my back? She practically ordered me to go hang out at the library this afternoon with you rather than annoying her, too."

She masked her hurt at that, at the idea that he was coming with her to appease his mother rather than by choice, and pressed on. "Great minds think alike."

"I'll take that as a compliment, as I was going to come anyway."

"You were?" She tried not to sound too pathetically overexcited at the news.

"Of course I was. It's Thursday." That settled, he hefted his bag onto his shoulders. "Can I carry anything for you?"

"No, that's OK. I wouldn't want Murphy to misunderstand."

"He'll misunderstand anyway, and at least this way you get your books carried." He might just have a point, she decided.

"If you insist." She passed him her library books with a smile.

Sure enough, Murphy _did_ misunderstand. He made no secret of that fact, wiggling his eyebrows at them as they passed, but Clarke decided this was not a day for worrying about such trivialities. No, this was a day for enjoying Bellamy's company, and for being a good friend and distracting him from his concerns.

With that decided, she asked after his reading material as they walked through the school gates. She'd been remiss in doing so, this week, she realised. With everything that had happened, books had never quite made it to the top of their list of conversational priorities. It was good, then, and familiar, and so very _them_ , to learn that he had enjoyed his introduction to Picasso, but had not found a new all-consuming passion for his artworks, and to share in return that, she had to concede, the French Revolution did seem like an interesting kind of topic even without the melodramatic romantic plot of an historical novel.

"I've always found it kind of strange that you're into all of these historical romance novels." He told her as they rounded a corner and the library came into sight. "You never struck me as the romantic type, with your common sense and chess and wanting to be a doctor. And I never noticed you – you know – being that into romantic relationships yourself."

"I did have one, once." She reminded him sadly. "You might have noticed that one."

"Yeah." She looked up, realised her mistake. He was staring at her, hard, and she couldn't quite work out why.

"And that one was pretty damn romantic, between the ice cream dates and the apology-chocolate-cake-baking. And the cheesy hoodie loan. And the making out in the park on Christmas Day."

He was staring at her, still, as they came to a stop outside the library doors.

She took a deep breath, and braced herself for the biggest risk of her rather limited romantic life. She didn't know what had possessed her, in this moment. She just knew that, if she didn't finish that list now, she would never forgive herself.

"And carrying my books everywhere. I always found that pretty sweet and – and romantic."

She peeped a look up at him, wondered what he'd made of that. Found him staring, still, gaze filled with something she couldn't quite identify. Perhaps, it occurred to her, she'd made a mistake. Perhaps she'd read him wrong, and he honestly did only want a close platonic friendship with her.

She wouldn't panic, she told herself. She wouldn't panic, and she wouldn't cry.

"Clarke?" His voice sounded a bit funny, she thought, not quite his usual smooth confident self. "What would happen if I kissed you now?"

"I'd add it to my list of romantic things you've done." She told him carefully, not quite sure where this conversation was going. Was he trying to imply that he would like to kiss her? But if so, why was he not just getting on with it? "And I'd kiss you back, of course. And then I guess I'd stand here and overthink whether you had enjoyed it and whether I should ask you out for ice cream and whether there was any chance of us getting back together again and -"

It seemed he _had_ been trying to imply that he would like to kiss her. She inferred this from the fact that he was, in fact, now kissing her. And it was everything she had remembered, and it was more, as his warm lips moved firmly and so familiarly against her own, and that tongue she had used to find so excessive made its presence felt in the most welcome of ways. And he seemed to have dropped her books, but she decided that probably wasn't worth worrying about, just now, as she felt one of his hands tangle in her hair and the other go to her waist to pull her flush against him.

She couldn't decide what to explore first. She'd missed him, so much, and in this moment she was a bit overcome by the range of options, the amount of lost time to make up for. She cupped one hand about his neck, played with the ends of his hair, and, fully aware that her behaviour was completely out of line for the public pavement outside a public library, she slipped the other hand up his shirt.

He let out a groan and pulled back from her lips.

"The answer's yes." He whispered against her mouth, as she struggled to keep up. "Yes, I did enjoy that, and yes, I would very much like you to ask me out for ice cream, and yes, as far as I'm concerned, there's _definitely_ a chance of us getting back together."

She felt a smile split her face at that, quite without her permission, and pressed her curving lips back up against his in a rather clumsy kiss.

"Bellamy, I hear there's a place just around the corner that has fifteen different types of sundae. Can I take you out for ice cream?"

"Yes."

At this rate, she thought, as they somehow ended up sharing another kiss, the library was going to be closed by the time they got round to returning their books. But in the grand scheme of things, that hardly seemed like a priority, just now. No, her priority was very definitely the feel of Bellamy's lips against hers, and his skin beneath her fingertips, and the happiness that she was almost in danger of drowning in, she suspected.

"Clarke?" He pulled away and she managed, with substantial self-control, not to let out an audible sigh.

"Yeah?"

"Was that a yes to getting back together?"

"Yes." She laughed into the crook of his neck. "What was your first clue?"

He didn't bother answering that, but pressed his lips softly to her forehead a couple of times instead, and she found herself becoming increasingly aware that they were, in fact, still standing outside the library. Perhaps, she wondered, they ought to do something about that.

"Do you think we should go inside at some point? We can't go for our ice cream date until we've had our library date."

"We can go wherever the hell you want, Princess, as long as I get to keep hold of your hand." She squinted at him a little, wondering who he was and what he'd done with Bellamy Blake.

"Are you feeling OK?"

"Shh. I think that was more sweet than pathetic?"

"I might add it to my list of romantic things you've done."

With that decided, they entered the library hand in hand, to a slightly-too-knowing smile from Juliet who was on the front desk. They made short work of returning their books and choosing new ones, and Clarke couldn't help but feel that they were rushing this portion of their date a little. She expressed as much to Bellamy, and he laughed rather louder than she thought was wise given their location.

"Do you blame us? We've got an ice cream date to get to."

"What are we doing after the ice cream?" She asked, not sure what the protocol was for getting back together with one's boyfriend on a school night.

"I hope we're watching Scrubs." He said, not quite meeting her eye. "I know this has all happened really quickly so just say if it's too much but – but if you wanted to come over to mine that would be fun. You could stay over, even."

Excited to find that he was thinking similar thoughts to her, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I'd like some Scrubs time. I'd like that a lot. But I was thinking maybe you could come to mine? And meet my mother? And – and maybe have a change of scene?"

"It might do me good to spend the night away from my mum and sister." He caught on to her meaning quicker than she had expected. "They'll have to manage without me when I go to uni anyway."

"And I think it might do you good not to sit there fussing over your mum?"

"You might be right." He agreed with a strained smile. "This is the first time I've been out of the house apart from school all week. Can we stop by on the way to yours, though? Just to tell them where I'll be."

"Of course."

"And maybe even to do sensible things like grab some clean clothes."

"I thought I was the sensible one?"

"Not any more. You're the romantic one, today."

They'd never made out in the library before and it was, Clarke decided, time to do something about that. She _was_ the romantic one, today, after all.

…...

The ice cream tasted pretty good, just as Clarke remembered. In fact, she noted, it tasted almost as good as kissing Bellamy. But there would be time enough, later, for kissing and for Scrubs, and right now she was quite keen to make up for missed time on the conversational front.

As if he had read her mind, Bellamy spoke through a mouthful of sundae.

"I was a bit of an idiot, wasn't I, to suggest we could be friends?"

"I don't know. I'd have done that, for you. I'd have practised being your friend, if that was what you needed from me. You're that important to me. But – yeah – I don't think I'd have been very good at it."

"You did a pretty great job, actually, this last week. Thank you. But I think you do a better job of dating me."

She laughed at that, reached in to kiss him for good measure.

"I'm so happy we fixed this, Bellamy."

"Me, too. You're – you're that important to me, too, you know that right?"

This was, she noted, getting a bit _deep_ for a teenage Scrubs-and-screwing based kind of a relationship. But she supposed things had been heading that way for a while, now. And she had to admit that, if she was being honest, him meeting her mother was long overdue.

…...

They had managed to leave the Blakes' house with an overnight bag for Bellamy and only a mild case of hysteria on Octavia's part, so Clarke was counting that as a victory. As she unlocked the front door of her own home and yelled a generic greeting to her mother, she was feeling cautiously optimistic.

No matter how this went, it couldn't go as badly as Bellamy finding out she'd been lying to him for months.

"Clarke?" Her mother appeared in the hallway, a carefully joyful expression on her face. "Bellamy? It's so lovely to meet you at last."

There was an excruciating pause, in which Bellamy awkwardly proffered his hand for Abby to shake, and Abby stood and looked consideringly at him, and Clarke wondered what on Earth had possessed her to think this could ever be a good idea.

And then, suddenly, somehow, her mother was pulling her boyfriend into a very enthusiastic and distinctly _familial_ hug, and he was patting her awkwardly on the back and looking somewhat bemused.

"It's lovely to meet you, too, Dr Griffin." He said when she pulled away. "Thank you for letting Clarke invite me over."

"Bless you, don't be silly. You can call me Abby, and you're always welcome." She stopped for a moment, and swallowed deeply, and Clarke braced herself for whatever might come out of her mouth next. "I'm sorry I ever led Clarke to believe you wouldn't be welcome."

"Thanks, Mum." Clarke found herself feeling rather moved. "I'm – I'm sorry I kept all this a secret from you."

"Oh, hush now." Her mother dismissed her concerns. "Do you want some supper, or did you fill up on ice cream?"

Clarke considered, for a moment, whether there was any good way to tell her mother she didn't want supper because her priority right now was to get on with screwing Bellamy.

In the end, he beat her to it. "Thanks, Abby, but we did have a lot of ice cream. And I know Clarke is keen for us to get on with our Maths homework. You know how she is, always studying so hard."

"She was right. You do seem a sweet boy. Go on, the pair of you, and enjoy your Maths homework. I can make us some supper a bit later?"

"That sounds great, Mum, thanks."

With that, Abby disappeared back into the living room, and Clarke dragged Bellamy none-too-elegantly up the stairs.

"Did you just lie to my mother?" She hissed as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Maybe." He smirked a little. "Balance of good and bad, remember? I did this for a good cause."

She laughed at that, and dragged him into her bedroom, shutting the door behind them rather hastily. She wasn't sure where to start, really, now that they were alone behind closed doors. And all of a sudden she found herself feeling rather nervous, wondering how this was all going to turn out. What if she wasn't as _fun_ in the bedroom as he'd remembered? What if he noticed how out of practice she was at sucking him off?

What if he no longer looked at her like she was beautiful?

"Clarke?" His soft voice broke into her thoughts, and she made a valiant effort to smile. "Relax, Clarke. We can take it slow."

"I know. I just..." She trailed off into silence.

"We're both doing things we're nervous about, remember?" She cracked a smile at that, remembered the first time they'd shared a Scrubs afternoon together. "And we don't have to even – you know – we don't have to do that now, today. If you're not ready we can -"

She cut off his nervous babbling with a kiss. And she wanted to take it slow, really she did, and wanted to linger over this moment of happy reunion, and wanted, too, to make it good for him and show him he'd been right to give her a second chance.

But, on the other hand, he was here, and somehow his hands were everywhere, and she'd missed him and – well – things got a little out of hand.

"I thought we were taking it slow?" He asked with a smirk as she pulled off his shirt.

She didn't dignify that with an answer, but instead knelt at his feet, and unclasped his belt, and opened his waistband. There was, she felt, something she needed to do, to show him just how much she wanted to make this work, and how sorry she was for lying to him, and how much of a _fucking idiot_ she'd been.

She looked up at him, gave a smile she hoped looked _fun_. And then she took his cock into her mouth.

He groaned appreciatively, and knitted his fingers into her hair, and she rather expected him to use that grip to urge her to take him deeper, but he did no such thing. Instead, he eased her slowly away from him, and bent to kiss her on the lips.

"You're so good at that. And I've missed your mouth so much. But – but I want to hold you, today, if that's OK?"

She froze for a moment, trying to get her head around that. Trying to work out whether, perhaps, there was a bit more going on here than she had at first realised, and maybe he was dating her for something beyond her willingness to suck his cock.

"I'd like that." She admitted, realising that, maybe, she was allowed to tell him the absolute truth, this time round.

That was quite enough overthinking, she concluded, with that realisation. It was time to have _fun_.

…...

They did have supper eventually, and Clarke did a valiant job of cooperating with her mother's attempts at polite conversation and not blushing too much at the recollection of the time she'd just spent with Bellamy upstairs. A valiant but not altogether _successful_ job, she had to admit to herself, as he caught her eye and smiled a rather affectionate smile, and she found herself remembering the way he'd looked down at her with almost exactly the same smile as he'd eased himself inside of her and told her she was beautiful.

Yes, she was terrible at this. She was absolutely terrible at trying to pretend that she'd just done her Maths homework, and absolutely terrible at removing the guilty grin from her face.

Absolutely terrible at lying in general, actually.

Bellamy, of course, was in his element. He was utterly charming as he invited Abby to talk about her job, and as he complimented the meal she had cooked, and as he sang Clarke's praises a little more vehemently, she thought, than she truly deserved.

"Can we do the dishes, Abby?" He asked politely, when supper was eaten and she was beginning to wonder how soon they could excuse themselves.

"Bless you, absolutely not." Her mother insisted. "You kids must have a lot of catching up to do. Go on with you."

Well, then. She wasn't going to turn down that offer. She took him by the hand and led the way back up the stairs.

They actually did do some Maths homework, at that point. But even Maths homework was, it turned out, a whole lot more fun with a little making out between questions as a reward. And then they even watched some Scrubs and, in a marvellous feat of self-control, they made it through an entire episode before their Scrubs time deteriorated into – well – _Scrubs time_.

And then, as if having Bellamy stay over at her house was something entirely normal, and routine, and the kind of thing that happened all the time, they brushed their teeth and went to bed.

"This is so strange." He whispered, as he cradled her close in the darkness. "This morning I was worrying about my mum and sister and wondering whether I was ever going to get chance to fix things with you and now – now I'm in your bed and my toothbrush is in your pretentious en suite bathroom and I know your mother's recipe for spaghetti bolognese."

"I don't find the last thing on that list very surprising. My mother does like to show off her spaghetti bolognese recipe." He laughed a little at that, but she sensed he had something more to say.

"I just – do you not find it quite weird how we got here?"

"We started out with you throwing my lunch in a bin and me swearing to dedicate myself to revenge. We were never going to take a very conventional route to being lovestruck teenagers."

Too late, she realised what she'd said. Realised that, if he wanted to, he could be very freaked out indeed, right about now. They'd only just got back together, and, of course, she hadn't actually said that thing – or meant it, obviously, it was way too soon for that, of course it was – had she mentioned they'd only just got back together? - but she needed to find a way out of this, now, otherwise he would surely -

"Clarke?" He muttered, breaking into her definitely-not-at-all-panicked train of thought. "Don't freak out but – but I think I might love you. God, I know that probably sounds stupid. And I know it's probably way too soon and you're probably freaking out right now – hell, we've been speaking for, what, six months? And then we spent half of that _not_ speaking again. It's just that, you know, I can be _me_ with you, and you're so supportive, and – and I should probably stop talking right about now."

"I would." She agreed mildly. "Otherwise you might miss out on me telling you that – that I think I might love you, too."

It had been coming on for a while, now that she came to think of it. Or maybe she just felt like it had, because the dizzying happiness of today had rather eclipsed anything she might have been feeling before, made it rather tricky to recall all the hatred and anger they'd started out from, or got snagged on along the way.

In fact, Clarke Griffin could barely remember a time when she did not love Bellamy Blake.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
